Hugh Edwin Rodham (born May 26, 1950) is an American lawyer and former Democratic Party politician who is the only surviving brother of former New York Senator, First Lady, and Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the brother-in-law of former U.S. President Bill Clinton.
In 1989 Rodham became Assistant Public Defender for the Miami Drug Court. Rodham made one run for political office, winning the 1994 Democratic nomination for the United States Senate seat from Florida, but losing the general election to incumbent Senator Connie Mack III. During the Clinton administration, some of his actions came under public scrutiny. Since then he has been in private practice as a lawyer.
Early life
Rodham was raised in a United Methodist family in suburban Park Ridge, Illinois. His father, Hugh Ellsworth Rodham (1911–1993), was of Welsh and English descent. He managed a successful small business in the textile industry. His mother, Dorothy Emma Howell (1919–2011), was a homemaker of English, Scottish, French Canadian, and Welsh descent. Hugh has an older sister, Hillary, and younger brother, Tony. He was often referred to as "Hughie" growing up, to distinguish him from his father, and that name form would persist into adulthood at times.
Attending Maine South High School in Park Ridge, Rodham was known as what one writer later termed a "fun-loving jock" and was not as academically oriented as his sister had been. He graduated from Maine South High School in 1968, playing on the football, wrestling, and baseball teams.
Like his father, Rodham attended Pennsylvania State University, graduating in 1972 with a Bachelor of Science degree from the College of Health and Human Development. While attending Penn State he was backup quarterback on the Penn State Nittany Lions football team. Rodham was also an active member of the Sigma Triton charge of Theta Delta Chi fraternity at Penn State.
He served in the Peace Corps in Colombia for over a year, training teachers; he later called it the most rewarding experience of his life. He then gained advanced degrees in education (M.A.) and law (J.D.) at the University of Arkansas, the latter occurring while Bill Clinton was governor of the state.
Public defender
Rodham moved to Miami, where he began to practice criminal law; from around 1980 he became an investigator for the public defender in Dade County. For a while there he shared a condominium with his brother Tony. While frequently paired together in commentary, the brothers have distinct personalities; Hugh has been compared by friends and acquaintances to the Norm Peterson character from the television series Cheers.
Rodham married Maria Victoria Arias, a Cuban immigrant lawyer whom he met while she was interning at the public defender's office, in 1986. She had come to the United States from Cuba around 1960, as Fidel Castro took power, when she was two years old. She graduated from the University of Miami School of Law in 1989 and subsequently became an established real estate lawyer. She switched from being a Republican to a Democrat during the Bill Clinton presidential campaign, 1992, and founded a group known as Cuban-American Women for Clinton. A 1993 Washington Post story described her as "a smart, tough attorney, a Cuban version of Hillary." She has given both Bill and Hillary Clinton advice on Cuba matters and an immediate connection to the Cuban exile community in Miami. The couple have lived in Coral Gables, Florida, during their married life and do not have any children.