Pete Stark

Fortney Hillman " Pete " Stark, Jr. ( born November 11, 1931 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin ) is an American politician of the Democratic Party. He represented from 1973 to 2013 California the House of Representatives of the United States and is considered the first member of the Congress of the United States, which has been known publicly for atheism. In the 2012 election, he defeated his Democratic competitor Eric Swalwell.

Life

Stark earned his B.Sc. in 1953 in Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his MBA in 1960 at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. A bank was founded in 1963 by him could expand considerably. Stark had been represented by 1973 in the U.S. House of Representatives and retired on January 3, 2013, the Office, after he was defeated at the 2012 election of his competitor Eric Swalwell. Stark lives in Fremont, California, and is a vehement opponent of the Iraq war as well as a supporter of the Secular Coalition for America. Stark's public commitment to atheism in the United States quite unusual because the religion in the public perception plays a more important role than in Europe.