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Kent Conrad

American politician (born 1948)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 7, 2026
Entity authorityQ553349
Source-derived summary

Gaylord Kent Conrad (born March 12, 1948) is a former American politician who was a United States senator from North Dakota. He is a member of the Democratic Party. First elected to the Senate in 1986, he served as chairman or ranking member of the Senate Budget Committee for 12 years.

On January 18, 2011, Conrad announced that he was retiring from politics and would not run for reelection in 2012. He said in a statement that it was more important that "I spend my time and energy trying to focus on solving the nation's budget woes than be distracted by another campaign." Fellow Democrat Heidi Heitkamp was elected to replace him.

Conrad currently co-chairs the Bipartisan Policy Center's Commission on Retirement Security and Personal Savings. He is also a member of the ReFormers Caucus of Issue One. In addition, he serves on the board of directors of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

Early life

Conrad was born in Bismarck, North Dakota, the son of Abigail and Gaylord E. Conrad. He was orphaned at a young age and subsequently raised by his grandparents in Bismarck.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Kent Conrad” is american politician (born 1948). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Kent, Conrad and American, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewStrongest as a route into the people, institutions and dated events that shaped the subject’s public record. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1948, 1986, 2011, 2012—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1948-03-12. For this dossier, Kent, Conrad and American is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american politician (born 1948)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 7, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q553349. VIAF identifies the subject as 58664806. The Library of Congress control number is no95036723. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1948, 1986, 2011 and 2012.

Critical limits

A concise life account rarely captures disputed attribution, private networks or the changing language used to describe a career. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Kent Conrad”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Kent Conrad primary sources, Kent Conrad archive and Kent research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Kent Conrad”?
  2. Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Kent Conrad” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.