Mary Landrieu
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Mary Loretta Landrieu (born November 23, 1955) is a Democratic United States Senator for the state of Louisiana. She is daughter of former New Orleans mayor Moon Landrieu and the sister of current Louisiana Lt. Governor Mitch Landrieu. Her voting record has not been as liberal as that of the average Democratic senator; most Louisiana Democrats elected to statewide office tend to be more conservative than the national average. Because of this, Landrieu has been accused of being a "Democrat in Name Only" by many liberal Democrats.
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, losing to Mike Foster.
Landrieu was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996, defeating Woody Jenkins, and narrowly won reelection in 2002, defeating Suzanne Haik Terrell. Some experts and pundits considered Landrieu to be 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 has become Louisiana's senior Senator.
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. 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.
External links
- Official website (http://landrieu.senate.gov/)
- Congressional biography (http://bioguide.congress.gov/scripts/biodisplay.pl?index=L000550)