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Among the candidates for president in 2008 are eight whose standing in opinion polls, and/or accumulation of funds, have the pundits viewing them as long shots. Alphabetically, top row, left to right, they are: Joseph Biden (D), Chris Dodd (D), Mike Gravel (D), Duncan Hunter (R). Bottom row, left to right: Dennis Kucinich (D), Ron Paul (R), Bill Richardson (D), Tom Tancredo (R).
Joseph Biden, Democrat
GETTY IMAGES/Win McNamee
Joseph Biden has been in the United States Senate for some 35 years, focusing on foreign policy (he is pictured at a hearing with General David Petraeus) and the judiciary (leading the Democratic fight against most Republican nominees for the Supreme Court). Running for president for the second time, he says that, unlike his opponents, he has the experience, and the concrete plan, to end the war in Iraq.
Joseph Biden
Biden campaign/Betty
Biden, 65, was born on November 20, 1942 in Pennsylvania. He grew up in Delaware, the eldest of four children of a car salesman. In 1972, Biden was elected to the United States Senate, at the age of 29. Shortly afterwards, his wife and their infant daughter were killed in a car accident. In 1977, Biden remarried. In his sixth Senatorial term, he serves on the Judiciary and chairs the Foreign Relations committees.
Christopher Dodd, Democrat
Dodd campaign
Christopher Dodd, who for more than three decades has represented Connecticut first in Congress and then in the United States Senate, is best-known in Campaign 2008 for moving his family to Iowa several months before the Iowa caucuses. Here he is with second wife Jackie, and their daughters Grace (born in 2001) and Christina (2005); Grace is enrolled in an Iowa public school.
Christopher Dodd
Dodd campaign
Christopher Dodd, 63, was born on May 27, 1944, the fifth of six children of Thomas J. Dodd (upper left, with his children), a United States Senator from Connecticut best known as a prosecutor of the Nuremburg Trials. The younger Dodd served in the Peace Corps in the Dominican Republic, then joined the Army Reserve. Two years after graduating from law school, he was elected to Congress. Bottom right, he campaigns.
Mike Gravel, Democrat
GETTY IMAGES/Mark Wilson
After Mike Gravel started being excluded from Democratic debates, the sponsors saying that he did not meet the criteria for a viable candidate, Gravel participated in his own way: He commented on the broadcast at a gathering two blocks away. Gravel, who served as U.S. senator from Alaska from 1969 to 1981, is as ardently against the Iraq War as he was the Vietnam War (he helped get the Pentagon Papers published).
Mike Gravel
Gravel campaign
Maurice Robert Gravel, 77, was born on May 13, 1930 in Springfield, Massachusetts. He put himself through college at Columbia University in New York by driving a cab. He moved to Alaska in 1956, before it was a state in the union, and, after several tries at elective office, served first as Alaska state representative, then as United States Senator from 1969 to 1980. In 1989, he founded The Democracy Foundation.
Duncan Hunter, Republican
GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty
Duncan Hunter, a former Army Ranger who served in Vietnam, has been a Congressman from San Diego, California since 1981. He is the former chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. His presidential campaign has focused on border security (he authored the bill to put up a fence between Mexico and California) and foreign trade.
Dennis Kucinich, Democrat
GETTY IMAGES/David Lienemann
Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich, in his second bid for the presidency, argues that he is the best candidate because he is the only one running who voted against authorizing the Iraq War in 2002, and has voted against its continued funding since then. He also voted against the USA Patriot Act. Unlike his opponents, he supports a single-payer health care system; same-sex marriage; a Cabinet-level Department of Peace.
Dennis Kucinich
Kucinich campaign/AP
Kucinich, 61, was born on October 8, 1946 in Cleveland, Ohio, the oldest of seven children of a truck driver. Kucinich was elected to the Cleveland City Council at the age of 23 and as Cleveland's mayor in 1977, at age 31. Because he refused to sell the city's publicly owned utility company, Cleveland went into default, and he lost the next election, though was thanked years later. He has been a Congressman since 1996.
Ron Paul, Republican
GETTY IMAGES/Bill Pugliano
Ron Paul has been a Congressman from Texas on and off for the past three decades, and ran as the Libertarian candidate for President in 1988. As a candidate this year for the Republican nomination, he is opposed to gun control, but also to the Iraq War. He is opposed to the federal income tax, but also to Patriot Act. He is also opposed to Roe v. Wade, the U.N., NATO, the war on drugs, and the Federal Reserve.
Ron Paul
Paul campaign
Paul, 72, was born on August 20, 1935 outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son a dairy farmer. He went on to medical school, then served as a flight surgeon for the U.S. Air Force during the Vietnam War. Paul moved with his wife to Texas to begin a ob/gyn medical practice. Eight years later, he became a Congressman, but continued to deliver babies -- more than 4,000 so far. He has five children and 18 grandchildren.
Bill Richardson, Democrat
GETTY IMAGES/J. Emilio Flores
In one of his campaign commercials, a skeptical job interviewer rattles off some of Bill Richardson's accomplishments and then asks him, "So what makes you think you can be president?" Richardson, bilingual governor, former legislator, Energy secretary, diplomat -- who has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize five times -- declared his candidacy in May and said he could fix the "ravages" of the Bush administration.
Bill Richardson
Richardson campaign/Getty
Richardson, 60, was born on November 15, 1947 in California, the son of a Mayflower descendant and a Mexican mother. He grew up in Mexico City, but was educated in Massachusetts, where he met his future wife. They moved to New Mexico, which he represented for 14 years. He then served as ambassador to the United Nations, leaving to become Secretary of Energy. Since 2003, he has been the governor of New Mexico.
Tom Tancredo, Republican
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Tom Tancredo, a congressman from Denver, Colorado since 1999, has focused his presidential campaign against illegal immigration, seeing it as a threat to the nation's security. "If you want to call me a single-issue candidate, that's fine," he said in March, 2007, "just so long as you know that my single issue is the survival and the success of the conservative movement in America."
Tom Tancredo
Tancredo campaign/Getty
Tancredo, 61, was born on December 20, 1945 in Denver, the grandson of Italian immigrants. He taught history in junior high school, where he met his wife (2002 family Christmas card, bottom right), then became a Colorado state legislator, then anti-immigration congressman. Pakistani activists burned Tancredo in effigy after he suggested that one response to future terrorist attacks would be "taking out" Muslim holy sites.