The Directory News
← Back to Officials

Chris Van Hollen

Details

Party Affiliation
Democratic
In Office Since
Jan 1, 2017

Federal Roster & Campaign Finance

Bioguide ID
V000128
Chamber
US Senate
State
MD
View Congress.gov roster entry →
Meetings

No relevant meetings found.

Election History

No election history found.

Recent Bills Sponsored

No bills sponsored by Chris Van Hollen are on file.

Recent Votes

Bill title and chamber are the only bill details held for these votes; see Bills for the fuller record. “Roll call” is the upstream roll-call identifier, not a date no vote date is recorded in this dataset.

View full voting record (80 votes) →

Biography

Christopher Van Hollen Jr. ( van HOL-ən; born January 10, 1959) is an American attorney and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Maryland, a seat he has held since 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, he served as the U.S. representative for Maryland's 8th congressional district from 2003 to 2017 and as a Maryland state senator from 1995 to 2003. In 2007, Van Hollen became the chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC). In this post, he was responsible for leading efforts to defend vulnerable Democrats and get more Democrats elected to Congress in 2008, which led to a wave election for Democrats. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi created a new leadership post, Assistant to the Speaker, in 2006 so that Van Hollen could be present at all leadership meetings. He was elected ranking member on the Budget Committee on November 17, 2010. Pelosi appointed Van Hollen to the 12-member bipartisan Committee on Deficit Reduction with a mandate for finding major budget reductions by late 2011. On October 17, 2013, Pelosi appointed Van Hollen to serve on the bicameral conference committee. Van Hollen ran for the United States Senate in 2016 to replace retiring Senator Barbara Mikulski. He defeated U.S. Representative Donna Edwards in the Democratic primary and won the general election with 61% of the vote to Republican nominee Kathy Szeliga's 36%. He was reelected in 2022 with nearly 66% of the vote to Republican nominee Chris Chaffee's 34%. Van Hollen chaired the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) from 2017 to 2019. Van Hollen became Maryland's senior senator when Ben Cardin retired from the Senate in 2025. Van Hollen is set to become the dean of Maryland's congressional delegation in 2027, as longtime Representative Steny Hoyer has announced his retirement. Van Hollen is a possible presidential candidate in 2028.

Read more on Wikipedia →

From the English Wikipedia article “Chris Van Hollen”, available under CC BY-SA.