1. Karen Rae Shepherd is an American politician who served in the United States House of Representatives from 1993 to 1995.
14 Facts About Karen Shepherd
1. 2.
In 1963 Karen Shepherd married Vincent Karen Shepherd and they moved to Fort Lewis, Washington, where he was an officer in the Army.
3.
Vincent owned and operated a wholesale oil distributing company and Karen Shepherd taught Freshman English at Brigham Young University.
4.
Karen Shepherd became politically active with the Democratic Party, working for the Senate campaigns of both Wayne Owens and Frank Moss.
5.
Karen Shepherd was the first woman ever to serve at cabinet level in Salt Lake County Government when she became Director of Social Services.
6.
In 1990 Karen Shepherd was elected to the Utah State Senate, taking the place of Frances Farley, who had been at that time the only woman serving in the Utah Senate.
7.
Karen Shepherd served in the Utah Legislature two years before announcing that she would run to succeed the four-term Democratic incumbent, US Representative Wayne Owens for his seat, after he announced he would not seek re-election but would, instead, run for the US Senate.
8.
Karen Shepherd put forward a 10-point plan for improving children's lives that included tracking down delinquent fathers and fully funding Head Start.
9.
Karen Shepherd won the race by a narrow 50 percent to 47 percent margin, becoming the second woman in Utah's history to be elected to Congress.
10.
Once sworn into Congress in January 1993, Karen Shepherd was placed on the Natural Resources and the Public Works and Transportation Committees.
11.
Karen Shepherd supported President Clinton's 1993 Budget package that cut the budget and raised taxes on upper income people.
12.
Karen Shepherd continued to support health and welfare reform and to speak out in support of what she called reasonable gun control.
13.
Immediately upon leaving Congress Karen Shepherd was a Fellow at the Institute of Politics at the John F Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.
14.
Former Congresswoman's Karen Shepherd's papers are in the Marriott Library Special Collections at the University of Utah, and are open for research.