John C. Danforth
Lifetime Achievement Award
For over 50 years, John C. “Jack” Danforth has shown that public servants can work together with integrity to find common ground.
Jack Danforth served in the Senate from 1977-1995, the first Republican in Missouri history elected to 3 terms. He and his friend Democratic U.S. Senator Tom Eagleton worked closely together to help Missouri from Washington D.C. Among his achievements was boldly forging common ground across old divides for bipartisan passage of the landmark 1991 Civil Rights Act.
Following his elected service, Jack held appointments in both Republican and Democratic presidential administrations. Before becoming U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Jack served as special envoy to Sudan where his focus was negotiating an end to the civil war in the South.
As a private citizen, Jack has worked to “demand a functioning government where compromise is the norm,” as he wrote in the 2019 anthology "Our American Story." A believer in substantive, civil discourse Jack has worked to try and stem the tide against toxicity and polarization. In 2017, he co-signed an amicus curiae brief to the Supreme Court of the United States to limit partisan gerrymandering, alongside other prominent Republican former senators including John McCain, Bob Dole, John Kasich, and others. In 2018, he endorsed and campaigned in favor of redistricting reform with a group of Republican and Democratic former senators in Missouri.
With Show Me Integrity, Jack works on promoting election reforms in Missouri to decrease toxic polarization and restore consensus-building and problem-solving in government.