Tom Birmingham

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Tom Birmingham (born Thomas Francis Birmingham, August 4, 1949) is the former President of the Massachusetts Senate. He is widely credited, along with Mark Roosevelt, with passage of a sweeping education bill, the Education Reform Act of 1993. He is a graduate of Austin Preparatory School, Harvard Law School, and received a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University, after graduating from Harvard College in 1972. He was an unsuccessful candidate for the Democratic nomination for Massachusetts governor in 2002, despite impressive fundraising. An avid cyclist, Birmingham biked across the state of Massachusetts in 2001.

In 1999, his proposal to keep the home stadium of The New England Patriots in Massachusetts was accepted by Patriots owner Robert Kraft and passed by the state legislature.

Today, Birmingham serves as Senior Counsel at the law firm of Edwards, Angell, Palmer & Dodge, and teaches state and local government at Tufts University . His wife, Selma Botman, has a Ph.D in Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard University and serves as the Executive Vice Chancellor at the City University of New York. They have two daughters, Erica Birmingham, a graduate of Harvard College, and Megan Birmingham, a student at Bates College.