Maria Cantwell
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Maria E. Cantwell (born October 13, 1958) is the junior United States Senator from Washington state and is a member of the Democratic Party.
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Early life
Maria Cantwell was born in Indianapolis. She was raised in a predominantly Irish neighbourhood on the south side of Indianapolis. Her father, Paul, served as county county commissioner, city councilman, state legislator, and Chief of Staff for U.S. Representative Andrew Jacobs. Her mother, Rose, was an administrative assistant.
She remained in Indianapolis through high school, when she left for Miami University of Ohio, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Public Administration. After earning her degree, she moved to Seattle, Washington in 1983 to campaign for Alan Cranston. She then moved to Seattle suburb Mountlake Terrace because it reminded her of Indianapolis. She led a successful campaign to build a new library there.
In the Washington and United States Houses
In 1986, Cantwell became the youngest woman ever elected to the Washington State Legislature at the age of 28. She had knocked on every door in her district. As a state representative, she helped write the Growth Management Act of 1990, which required cities to develop comprehensive growth plans, and she negotiated its passage. She also worked on legislation regulating nursing homes.
In 1992, she became the first Democrat elected to the United States House of Representatives from Washington's first congressional district in 40 years. During her first term, she got the Clinton Administration to drop its support of the Clipper Chip, she voted in support of NAFTA, and she supported President Clinton's 1993 budget. Republican Rick White used that vote to narrowly defeat her in the Republican landslide year of 1994.
In the private sector
After her defeat, Cantwell vowed to leave politics. Political ally Rob Glaser offered her a job as vice president of RealNetworks for marketing. She succeeded with the live broadcast of a Mariners-Yankees baseball game in 1995. (Cantwell is an avid Mariners fan.) She became a multimillionaire as the company grew.
The company faced heavy criticism in the computer industry, because its software incorporated spyware to tracked unsuspecting users' listening patterns and download history. Cantwell responded by writing a privacy policy (http://www.realnetworks.com/company/privacy/index.html) which she says was the first of its kind, and she claimed in 2000 that RealNetworks was at the frontier of Internet privacy. However, Internet privacy experts confirmed that RealNetworks software was sending personal names, private email addresses, and GUIDs to RealNetworks servers, contrary to the company's public claims. [1] (http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=realnetworks+site:grc.com) [2] (http://www.aluminumstudios.com/spyware/) [3] (http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,32250,00.html)
In August of 2000, Cantwell sold 110,000 shares of RealNetworks stock at about $44/share. By the end of the year the stock was selling for less than $9/share.
Campaign 2000
At the urging of party activists and officials, Cantwell formed an exploratory committee in October 1999 to mull a run for United States Senate against Democrat Deborah Senn and incumbent Republican Slade Gorton. She committed to running on January 19, 2000. Cantwell was behind Senn by a year, and quickly lost the Washington State Labor Council and NARAL endorsements to her.
Early on, privacy became an issue. Senn cited her record protecting medical privacy as insurance commissioner. Cantwell promoted Internet privacy and cited her opposition to the Clipper Chip, but to critics her commitment to privacy rang hollow because of her connection with RealNetworks.
At times the campaign was notable for its pettiness. After a Cantwell campaign worker deep-linked to a humorous photo on the Gorton website, Gorton accused Cantwell's campaign of hacking his website, and Senn accused Cantwell of hypocrisy because of the incident. "Fiddling with people's websites and calling it good fun ... adds a very childish and unworthy character to the race," said Senn's campaign spokeswoman Barbara Stenson. See http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,37025,00.html
In her television advertising late in the campaign, Senn accused Cantwell of ducking debates. Cantwell had agreed to two debates; Senn preferred more. They ended up having three debates, during which the candidates harshly attacked each other. Senn attacked RealNetworks and Cantwell's role in the company. Cantwell accused Senn of wanting to run against RealNetworks and said Senn was uninformed on Internet issues.
Cantwell secured the endorsements of the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the Spokesman-Review, and the News Tribune. She easily won her party's nomination, defeating Senn 3-to-1 in the primary. Although he won renomination, Slade Gorton got fewer votes than Cantwell and Senn's combined total. Cantwell cited this as evidence that Washington was ready for a change.
Social security, prescription drugs, dams, and campaign finance reform were among the most important issues in Cantwell's race against Gorton. Cantwell also adopted the slogan, "Your voice for a change," a veiled reference to Gorton's campaign theme in 1980, challenging incumbent Warren Magnuson's age. She claimed Gorton supported "19th century solutions to 21st century problems."
Cantwell won the endorsements of the Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the state's two biggest newspapers. Gorton won the Tri-City Herald and the News Tribune.
The election was extremely close. Early on, Cantwell enjoyed a lead, and TV networks projected a Cantwell victory. As absentee ballots streamed in, Gorton overtook Cantwell and achieved a lead of 15,000 votes. When the liberal Puget Sound area finished counting ballots and the county totals were certified on November 23, Cantwell had gained a lead of 1,953 votes out of 2.5 million ballots cast, or about .08%. A mandatory recount increased her lead to 2,229 votes, or .09%, on December 7. Republicans frequently pointed out that Cantwell won only five counties. However, those counties were among the most populous in Washington, including King County, Washington.
Republicans criticized Libertarian candidate Jeff Jared for acting as a spoiler. They said that had he not run, his 64,734 votes would have gone mostly to Slade Gorton, making him the victor. Some Democrats accused Republicans of hypocrisy for believing this, but not believing that Ralph Nader spoiled Al Gore's chances for the presidency. The Libertarians complained about Gorton's stances on gun control and the size of government in general.
Cantwell spent over $10 million of her own money on her campaign, and she did not accept money from PACs. When one includes money spent by the Republican Party on behalf of Gorton, he still outspent her.
In the United States Senate
Maria Cantwell serves on the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, and the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship.
She has voted with the Senate Democratic leadership most of the time, including her vote in favor of the Joint Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq.
On the contentious issue of abortion, Cantwell calls herself "100% pro-choice," and she consistently supports the positions of the pro-choice movement. She was one of only 34 Senators to vote against the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003, which passed and was signed into law by President Bush November 5, 2003, but remains tied up in the courts. She also voted against the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, which made it a crime to kill or harm an unborn baby during a criminal assault upon the mother. The bill passed the Senate by a vote of 61-38, and was signed into law by President Bush April 1, 2004.
One of her main accomplishments is the passage of an amendment "To prevent energy market manipulation," which passed 57-40. A previous effort was defeated by a vote of 50-48.
| Preceded by: John Miller | U.S. Representative 1st District 1993 – 1994 | Succeeded by: Richard Alan White |
| Preceded by: Slade Gorton | U.S. Senator (Class 1) from Washington 2001 – present | Succeeded by: Incumbent |