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Rob Portman

American lawyer and politician (born 1955)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 13, 2026
Entity authorityQ926069
Source-derived summary

Robert Jones Portman (born December 19, 1955) is an American attorney and politician who served as a United States senator from Ohio from 2011 to 2023. A member of the Republican Party, Portman was the 35th director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) from 2006 to 2007, the 14th United States trade representative from 2005 to 2006, and a U.S. representative from 1993 to 2005, representing Ohio's 2nd district.

In 1993, Portman won a special election to represent Ohio's 2nd congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives. He was reelected six times before resigning upon his appointment by President George W. Bush as the U.S. trade representative in May 2005. As trade representative, Portman initiated trade agreements with other countries and pursued claims at the World Trade Organization. In May 2006, Bush appointed Portman the director of the Office of Management and Budget.

In 2010, Portman announced his candidacy for the United States Senate seat being vacated by George Voinovich. He easily defeated then-Lieutenant Governor Lee Fisher and was reelected in 2016, defeating former Governor Ted Strickland. On January 25, 2021, he announced that he would not seek a third term in 2022.

After leaving office in 2023, Portman founded The Portman Center for Policy Solutions at the University of Cincinnati.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Rob Portman” is american lawyer and politician (born 1955). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Portman, American and lawyer, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1955, 2011, 2023, 2006—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1955-12-19. For this dossier, Portman, American and lawyer is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “american lawyer and politician (born 1955)” 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 Sep 13, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q926069. VIAF identifies the subject as 4678263. The Library of Congress control number is no2006022903. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1955, 2011, 2023 and 2006.

Critical limits

Later biographies can compress uncertainty and repeat inherited reputations, so apparently settled claims may still require comparison. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. 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 “Rob Portman”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Rob Portman primary sources, Rob Portman archive and Portman 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 “Rob Portman”?
  2. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
  3. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Rob Portman” 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.