Hillarysworld

In November 2000, Olympia J. Snowe was re-elected to a second six-year term with 69 percent of the vote to continue representing Maine in the United States Senate. With her election in 1994, she became only the second woman Senator in history to represent Maine, following the late Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, 

who served from 1949 - 1973. 

Before her election to the Senate, Olympia Snowe represented Maine’s Second Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives for sixteen years. Senator Snowe is only the fourth woman in history to be elected to both houses of Congress and the first woman in American history to serve in both houses of a state legislature and both houses of Congress. When first elected to Congress in 1978, at the age of 31, Olympia Snowe was the youngest Republican woman, and the first Greek-American woman, ever elected to Congress. She has won more federal elections in Maine than any other person since World War II.

Senator Snowe has worked extensively on a number of issues, such as: budget and fiscal responsibility; education, including student financial aid and education technology; national security; women’s issues; health care, including prescription drug coverage for Medicare recipients; oceans and fisheries issues; and campaign finance reform. She has also led efforts important to Maine, including a successful push for federal disaster funds in response to a devastating 1998 ice storm, increased funding for the Togus veterans hospital, reauthorization of the Northeast Dairy Compact so critical to the survival of Maine’s small family dairy farms, and opposition to a proposed federal rule that would have devastated the state’s lobster fishery.

In 2001, Snowe became the first Republican woman ever to secure a full-term seat on the Senate Finance Committee, and only the third woman in history to join the panel. The Committee is considered one of the most powerful in Congress because its members write tax, trade, health care, welfare, Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security-related legislation. Snowe is a member on the Subcommittee on Health Care, which oversees matters related to health insurance, Medicare and the uninsured.

A member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, she is the Chair of its Subcommittee on Fisheries and Coast Guard, which oversees America’s fisheries and the Coast Guard. A former member of the Senate Budget Committee, she was a key voice in establishing education as a priority within the context of the first balanced budget since 1969, and in 1999, 2000, and 2001 authored the amendment that for the first time created a reserve fund for a Medicare prescription drug benefit. She currently sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and is also Chair of the Senate Small Business Committee.

Prior to her service on the Finance Committee, Senator Snowe had been the fourth woman ever to serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee, where she was the first woman Senator to chair the Subcommittee on Seapower, which oversees the Navy and Marine Corps. Snowe is a leading voice in the Senate on issues related to women in the military and shipbuilding matters.

During the Senate impeachment trial of the President Clinton in 1999, Senator Snowe’s efforts precipitated an historic bipartisan caucus meeting of the Senate to establish procedures for consideration of the Articles of Impeachment that helped build public confidence in the Senate’s deliberations.

She attended St. Basil’s Academy, a Greek Orthodox school in Garrison, New York, and graduated from Edward Little High School in Auburn. She earned a degree in political science from the University of Maine in 1969.

Senator Snowe is married to former Maine Governor John R. McKernan Jr. She is a member of the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Lewiston, Maine.