Mary Landrieu
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Mary Loretta Landrieu (born November 23, 1955) is the senior Democratic United States Senator for the state of Louisiana. She is the daughter of former New Orleans mayor Maurice Edwin "Moon" Landrieu and the sister of current Louisiana Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu. Landrieu is one of the more conservative Democrats in the U.S. Senate. [[Citing sources citation needed]]
Mary Landrieu was born in Arlington, Virginia, and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. She graduated from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge in 1977. She was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives, from 1980 to 1988. She then served as Louisiana state treasurer from 1988 to 1996. Landrieu was an unsuccessful candidate in the 1995 gubernatorial race in Louisiana—she finished third in the state's qualifying primary (sometimes referred to as the "jungle" primary)—thus failing to make the run-off which effectively becomes the general election in Louisiana. The eventual winner was Democrat-turned-Republican Mike Foster.
Senate career
Landrieu was elected to the U.S. Senate in the presidential election year of 1996, defeating Woody Jenkins by 5,788 votes out of 1.7 million cast, the narrowest national result of the 33 races for the U.S. Senate and one of the closest election margins in Louisiana history. At the same time, Democrat Bill Clinton carried Louisiana by a considerable margin -- 927,837 votes to 712,586 cast for Republican Bob Dole. Jenkins refused to accept defeat and charged massive election fraud orchestrated by the Democratic political organization of New Orleans, which provided Landrieu's narrow margin of victory. He took his case to the Republican-dominated U.S. Senate, petitioning it to nullify the results of the Senate election and order new balloting. In a hearing, carried live by CSPAN, the Senate Rules Committee in a party-line 8 to 7 vote agreed to investigate the charges, thus putting Senator-elect Landrieu's status in the U.S. Senate under a cloud. The investigation dragged on for over ten months, angering the Democrats and exacerbating partisan friction in the day-to-day sessions of the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee to which Landrieu was assigned as a freshman member of the 105th Congress. Finally, in October 1997, the Rules Committee issued a report noting numerous instances of major electoral irregularities, but concluding that a new election at that late stage would place too onerous a burden on the state of Louisiana and recommended letting the election result stand.Six years later, Landrieu narrowly won reelection in the 2002 off-year election, defeating Suzanne Haik Terrell. Without her large support from Orleans Parish, she would have been unseated. Some experts and pundits had considered Landrieu as a possible running mate for presidential candidate John Kerry in the 2004 election before Senator Kerry's selection of John Edwards. With the departure of John Breaux from the Senate in December 2004, his seat being taken by David Vitter, Landrieu became Louisiana's senior senator. She faces voters again in 2008.
Gang of 14
On May 23, 2005, Landrieu was among the Gang of 14, the group of moderate senators who forged a compromise on the use of the judicial filibuster, thus blocking the Republican leadership's attempt to implement the so-called nuclear option over the organized filibustering by Senate Democrats of judicial nominees in the U.S. Senate. Under the agreement, the Democrats would retain the power to filibuster a Bush judicial nominee only in an "extraordinary circumstance" and the three most conservative Bush appellate court nominees (Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen and William Pryor) would receive a vote by the full Senate.Landrieu supports eliminating the estate tax permanently, and voted for the tax cut passed in 2001. On November 17, 2005, she was one of only four Democrats to vote against repealing the portions of the tax cuts passed in 2001 and 2003 that more liberal Democrats have charged unfairly benefit the wealthy. She voted for the Class Action Fairness Act of 2005 and the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. In 2004, Landrieu was one of only six Democrats to vote against renewing the ban on semi-automatic firearms. She has been one of the few Democrats to support drilling in the ANWR.
Landrieu voted for the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts in 2005, but in 2006, she opposed Samuel Alito, though she did vote in favor of cloture to send the nomination to an up-or-down vote.
Hurricane Katrina
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Shortly after the aftermath of the hurricane, Landrieu was involved in a testy exchange with Anderson Cooper of CNN in which she praised President Bush and the Senate for responding to Katrina and appropriating money for the effort. To which Cooper responded: "Excuse me, Senator, I'm sorry for interrupting. I haven't heard that, because, for the last four days, I've been seeing dead bodies in the streets here in Mississippi. And to listen to politicians thanking each other and complimenting each other, you know, I got to tell you, there are a lot of people here who are very upset and very angry and very frustrated." After this exchange, in subsequent interviews, Landrieu began to harshly criticize President Bush for his response to Katrina. [[Citing sources citation needed]]
Critics have condemned Louisiana's representatives over the state's handling of the Katrina crisis. However, FEMA contracted with Innovative Emergency Management for the now-infamous "Hurricane Pam" exercise which predicted a 70 percent evacuation rate in New Orleans. State officials ended up coordinating the evacuation of 80 percent of the city, far exceeding professionally-projected figures and reaffirming the truth in Landrieu's claim that New Orleans' Hurricane Katrina evacuation efforts were one of the most successful evacuation plans executed in the history of the United States. [[Citing sources citation needed]]
External links
- [Official website]
- [Congressional biography]
- [About.com Profile of US Senator Mary Landrieu of Louisiana]
- [CNN Transcripts]
- [record maintained by the Washington Post]
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