Elizabeth Dole

Elizabeth Hanford Dole
United States Senator from North Carolina
Incumbent
Assumed office January 7, 2003 Serving with Richard Burr
Preceded by	Jesse Helms
20th United States Secretary of Labor
In office January 25, 1989 – November 23, 1990
President	George H. W. Bush
Preceded by	Ann Dore McLaughlin
Succeeded by	Lynn Morley Martin
8th United States Secretary of Transportation
In office February 7, 1983 – September 30, 1987
President	Ronald Reagan
Preceded by	Andrew L. Lewis, Jr.
Succeeded by	James H. Burnley IV
Personal details
Political party	Republican
Spouse	Bob Dole
Children	Robin Dole (stepdaughter)
Residence	Salisbury, North Carolina
Alma mater	Duke University Harvard Graduate School of Education Harvard Law School

Mary Elizabeth Hanford "Liddy" Dole (born July 29, 1936) is an American politician who served in both the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush presidential administrations. She is currently serving as a United States senator from North Carolina after being elected to the Senate in 2002 as the first female U.S. senator from North Carolina. She ran for re-election in 2008, but lost to Democratic nominee Kay Hagan.

A graduate of Duke University and Harvard Law School, Dole served as Secretary of Transportation under Ronald Reagan and Secretary of Labor under George H.W. Bush before becoming head of the American Red Cross. She is a member of the Republican Party and former chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. She is married to former U.S. Senate Majority Leader and 1996 Republican presidential nominee Sen. Bob Dole.

Early life and family

Dole was born Mary Elizabeth Hanford in Salisbury, North Carolina, to Mary Ella Cathey (1901–2004) and John Van Hanford (1893–1978).

She attended Duke University, graduating in 1958, and followed that with post-graduate work at Oxford in 1959. She earned a master's degree in education from Harvard University in 1960 and a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1965. She is an alumna of the Phi Beta Kappa honor society and was recognized for being their leading orchid grower several times.

Dole first met her future husband, Senator Bob Dole in the spring of 1972 at a meeting arranged by her boss and mentor, Virginia Knauer. The couple dated, and she became his second wife on December 6, 1975. They have no children, though she is stepmother to Bob's adult daughter Robin from his first marriage of 24 years that ended in divorce in 1972.

White House years

Johnson Administration

Elizabeth Dole with friend and mentor Virginia Knauer. Mrs. Knauer ran the White House Office of Consumer Affairs in the Nixon Administration where Sen. Dole served as a Deputy Assistant to the President.

Dole, who had campaigned for the Kennedy-Johnson presidential ticket in 1960, worked in the White House in the later years of the administration of Lyndon B. Johnson.

Nixon and Ford Administrations

When many Democrats left the White House following Richard Nixon's replacement of Johnson, Dole did not. From 1969 to 1973, Elizabeth Dole served as Deputy Assistant to President Nixon for Consumer Affairs. In 1973, Nixon appointed her to a seven-year term on the Federal Trade Commission. In 1975, she became a Republican. She took a leave from her post as a Federal Trade Commissioner for several months in 1976 to campaign for her husband for Vice President of the United States when he ran on the Republican ticket with Gerald Ford. She later resigned from the FTC in 1979 to campaign for her husband's 1980 presidential run.

Reagan Administration and Secretary of Transportation

She served as United States Secretary of Transportation from 1983 to 1987 under Ronald Reagan, the first woman appointed to that position. In this role, she was the first woman to have served as the head of a branch of the United States Military, as the United States Coast Guard was under the Department of Transportation at the time.

The official Department of Labor portrait of Elizabeth Dole.

During her tenure the implementation of the "third eye" brake light on passenger cars was made mandatory. She worked with MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) to pass laws withholding federal highway funding from any state that had a drinking age below twenty-one. The state government of South Dakota opposed the drinking age law and sued Dole in the case South Dakota v. Dole, but the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Dole. She oversaw the privatization of the national freight railroad, CONRAIL. She initiated random drug testing within the Department of Transportation.

First Bush Administration and Secretary of Labor

Dole served as United States Secretary of Labor from 1989 to 1990 under George H. W. Bush; she is the first woman to serve in two different Cabinet positions in the administrations of two Presidents.

Red Cross presidency

In 1991 Dole became the president of the American Red Cross. She served until 1999 when she resigned, leaving little doubt she intended to pursue the Presidency of the United States.

1996 Republican National Convention

Dole's husband Bob Dole was the Republican nominee in the US presidential election of 1996. Elizabeth Dole, who would have become First Lady had her husband won the election, received recognition for her speech at the 1996 Republican National Convention, during which she walked out into the audience while talking conversationally about her husband's qualities.

2000 United States Presidential candidacy

Elizabeth Dole ran for the Republican nomination in the US presidential election of 2000, but pulled out of the race in October 1999 before any of the primaries, largely due to inadequate fundraising. Dole placed third—behind George W. Bush and Steve Forbes—in a large field in the Iowa Straw Poll (the first, non-binding, test of electability for the Republican Party nomination). The Iowa Straw Poll differed from the national polls where she was second only to Bush; Senator John McCain was in third place.

In July 2000, shortly before the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, Bush campaign sources said Elizabeth Dole was on the short list to be named the vice-presidential nominee, along with Michigan Governor John Engler, New York Governor George Pataki, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, author and political figure Lynne Cheney, and former Missouri Senator John Danforth. Many pundits believed that Dole was the frontrunner for the Vice Presidential nomination. Bush then surprised most pundits by selecting former U.S. Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, who was actually in charge of leading Bush's search for a vice presidential nominee.

U.S. Senate career

Campaigns

In late December 2001, Dole shifted her official residency from the Doles' condominium in the Watergate complex to her mother's home in Salisbury to seek election to the U.S. Senate. The seat was made available by the retirement of Republican Jesse Helms. Although Dole hadn't lived regularly in North Carolina since 1959, the state and national Republican establishment quickly cleared the field for her. She handily won the Republican primary with 80 percent of the vote over a lesser-known candidate, Dr. Ada Fisher. In the November general election, she defeated her Democratic opponent Erskine Bowles, a former chief of staff to former President Bill Clinton, by a surprisingly large eight-point margin.

Her election to the Senate marked the first time a spouse of a former Senator was elected to the Senate from a different state from that of her spouse. (Although Kansas Senator Nancy Landon Kassebaum married former Tennessee Senator Howard Baker, the marriage occurred after Kassebaum and Baker both had finished their service in the Senate). Dole was criticized by Democrats during her first Senate campaign over the fact that for over 40 years prior to her nomination, she had not lived in North Carolina.

In November 2004, following Republican gains in the United States Senate, Dole narrowly edged out Senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota for the post of chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. She is first woman to become chair of the NRSC. During her election cycle as chairperson, her Democratic Party counterpart, Senator Chuck Schumer raised significantly more money, and also had more success in recruiting candidates. In the November election, Dole's party lost six U.S. Senate seats to the Democrats, thus losing control of the U.S. Senate. Dole was replaced as NRSC chair by Senator John Ensign of Nevada following the 2006 midterms.

2008 Senate reelection campaign

Main article: United States Senate election in North Carolina, 2008

Dole's attack ad, "Godless".

Dole was running for reelection in 2008, but ultimately lost to Democrat Kay Hagan. Democratic congressman Brad Miller had expressed an interest in challenging her, but had decided against it, along with other prominent North Carolina Democrats such as Governor Mike Easley and former Governor Jim Hunt, who all declined to compete against Dole. On May 6, 2008, State Senator Kay Hagan won the Democratic primary election and became Dole's general election opponent. Reports late in the campaign suggested that Dole, once considered a safe bet for reelection, suffered from Barack Obama's decision to aggressively contest North Carolina in the presidential election.

Hagan was initially given little chance against Dole, but Hagan was helped by independent 527 groups lobbying/advertising against incumbent Dole and thereby helping Hagan. The Democratic Senate Campaign Committee has expended more money in North Carolina than in any other state during the 2008 election season. However, Dole benefited from more out-of-state funding overall than Hagan.

In late October, Dole released a controversial television ad attacking Hagan for reportedly taking donations from individuals involved in the Godless Americans PAC, a group which advocates for the rights of people who do not believe in God. The ad also included a female voice saying, "There is no God." The Dole campaign said the ad correctly shows who Hagan will associate with in order to raise campaign funds, and on November 1, Bob Dole also defended it, asserting that "it never questions her faith," and that "the issue is why she was there. There's no question about her faith. I think it's [the ad's] fair game."

Hagan, who is a member of the Presbyterian Church and a former Sunday school teacher, condemned the ad as "fabricated and pathetic," and, according to Hagan's campaign website, a cease-and-desist letter was "hand-delivered to Dole's Raleigh office, faxed to her Salisbury office and sent to her home at the Watergate in Washington, DC." Hagan also filed a lawsuit in Wake County Superior Court accusing Dole of defamation and libel.

The ad has met exceptionally strong criticism from the public as well as many local and several national media outlets. CNN's Campbell Brown said about the ad: "[A]mid all the attack ads on the airwaves competing to out-ugly one another, we think we've found a winner." The ad has been described as "ridiculously outrageous," "indecent," a "gross misrepresentation," "worse than dishonest" and "beyond the bounds of acceptable political disagreement," among other harsh criticism. Another ad issued by the Dole campaign in mid-October 2008 was described by The Fayetteville Observer as "[setting] the low mark in negative political campaigning."

In the 2008 election, Dole lost by a wider-than-expected margin, taking only 44 percent of the vote to Hagan's 53 percent--the widest margin for a Senate race in North Carolina in 30 years, and the largest margin of defeat for an incumbent Senator in the 2008 cycle. It has been speculated that the outcry over the "Godless" ads contributed to Dole's loss. Hagan heavily beat Dole in the state's five largest counties--Mecklenburg, Wake, Guilford, Forsyth and Durham--and dominated most of the eastern portion of the state. While Dole dominated the Charlotte suburbs and most of the heavily Republican Foothills region, it was not enough to save her seat.

Political positions

Dole worked with other senators such as Chuck Hagel to draft and attempt to pass legislation reforming housing financing regulation; the bill did not go up for a vote.

In September 2008, Dole joined the Gang of 20, a bipartisan group working towards comprehensive energy reform. The group is pushing for a bill that would encourage state-by-state decisions on offshore drilling and authorize billions of dollars for conservation and alternative energy.

Committee assignments

Dole is a member of the following U.S. Senate committees:

• U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services
  • Emerging Threats and Capabilities (Ranking Member)
  • Personnel
  • Readiness and Management Support
• U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs
  • Financial Institutions
  • Housing, Transportation, and Community Development
  • Security and International Trade and Finance
• U.S. Senate Select Committee on Aging
• U.S. Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship

Books by and about Elizabeth Dole

File:Dole UnlimitedPartners cover.jpg

Bookcover of the Doles' story

• Dole, Bob & Elizabeth with Richard Norton Smith (1988). The Doles: Unlimited Partners. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-671-60202-0. The book was first released during Bob Dole's presidential candidacy. (re-release) Unlimited Partners: Our American Story. Simon & Schuster, 1996. ISBN 0-684-83401-4
• Dole, Elizabeth (2004) Hearts Touched by Fire: My 500 Most Inspirational Quotations. Carroll & Graf. ISBN 0-7867-1428-X
• Lucas, Eileen (1998) Elizabeth Dole: A Leader In Washington. The Millbrook Press. ISBN 0-7613-0203-4
• Wertheimer, Molly Meijer and Gutgold, Nichola D. (2004) Elizabeth Hanford Dole: Speaking from the Heart. Praeger Publishers. ISBN 0-275-98378-1

Electoral history

See also: United States Senate election in North Carolina, 2002

See also: United States Senate election in North Carolina, 2008

North Carolina Senator (Class II) results: 2002–2008

Year		Republican	Votes	Pct		Democratic	Votes	Pct		3rd Party	Party	Votes	Pct		3rd Party	Party	Votes	Pct
2002		Elizabeth Dole	1,248,664	53.6%		Erskine Bowles	1,047,983	45%		Sean Haugh	Libertarian	33,807	1.5%		Paul DeLaney	Write-In	727	0.3%
2008		Elizabeth Dole	1,305,915	44%		Kay Hagan	1,573,592	53%		Chris Cole	Libertarian

See also

• Women in the United States Senate

External links

• United States Senator Elizabeth Dole, Official Senate website

• Biography at the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress
• Financial information (federal office) at the Federal Election Commission
• Profile at Vote Smart
• Senate Campaign website
• Collected news and commentary from The New York Times
• Profile at SourceWatch Congresspedia
• Elizabeth Dole at Curlie