Pat Roberts

Charles Patrick Roberts (born April 20, 1936) is a retired American politician and journalist who served as a United States senator from Kansas from 1997 to 2021. A member of the Republican Party, Roberts served 8 terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, from 1981 to 1997, before his election to the Senate. Born in Topeka, Kansas, Roberts is a graduate of Kansas State University. He served as a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps and worked as a newspaper reporter before entering politics in the late 1960s. He was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1980 to succeed 1st District Congressman Keith Sebelius, for whom he had worked. He served eight terms in the House, including one as chairman of the House Agriculture Committee. Roberts was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996. On the Intelligence Committee, he was responsible for an investigation into the intelligence failures prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He was the dean of Kansas's congressional delegation and Chairman of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee (ANF). He is the first person to chair both the House and the Senate agriculture committees. On January 4, 2019, Roberts announced that he would not seek reelection in 2020. He was succeeded by Representative Roger Marshall of Great Bend on January 3, 2021.