Mary Loretta Landrieu is an American entrepreneur and politician who served as a United States senator from Louisiana from 1997 to 2015.
46 Facts About Mary Landrieu
2.
Mary Landrieu received her baccalaureate degree from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.
3.
Mary Landrieu won a close race for the US Senate in 1996; she was re-elected by increasing margins in competitive races in 2002 and 2008, but was defeated in 2014 by US Representative Bill Cassidy.
4.
Mary Landrieu came to national attention in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 after she publicly criticized the federal response to the natural disaster.
5.
Mary Landrieu chaired the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship from 2009 to 2014, and chaired the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources from 2014 to 2015.
6.
Mary Landrieu was raised in New Orleans as a Catholic and attended Ursuline Academy of New Orleans.
7.
Mary Landrieu graduated from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge in 1977, where she was a member of Delta Gamma sorority.
8.
Mary Landrieu is Italian on her mother's side, and her family was among the large wave of Sicilian immigrants that came to Louisiana during the nineteenth century.
9.
Mary Landrieu has been repeatedly highlighted by the Order Sons of Italy in America as the first woman of Italian-American heritage to become a US senator.
10.
Mary Landrieu was first elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1979, serving from 1980 to 1988 and representing a New Orleans district.
11.
On July 25,1995, The Times-Picayune revealed that as a state representative, Mary Landrieu awarded Tulane University tuition waivers to a former campaign manager.
12.
Mary Landrieu ran to succeed her in both the special and regularly scheduled elections, both held in October 1987.
13.
Reilly decided not to contest a runoff election, known in Louisiana as a "general election", and Mary Landrieu won the treasurer's position by default.
14.
Mary Landrieu declined to run for a third term as Treasurer, giving up the office to run for governor in the 1995 election.
15.
Mary Landrieu was succeeded as state treasurer by her fellow Democrat Ken Duncan, a Baton Rouge attorney and businessman.
16.
Mary Landrieu was elected in 1996 to the US Senate seat previously held by John Bennett Johnston, Jr.
17.
Mary Landrieu defeated state Election Commissioner Suzanne Haik Terrell of New Orleans.
18.
In 2004 Mary Landrieu became Louisiana's senior senator upon the retirement of John Breaux, who was replaced by Republican David Vitter.
19.
Mary Landrieu was a former Democrat who switched to the Republican Party in 2007.
20.
In 2005, Mary Landrieu sponsored a resolution, which the Senate passed in an unprecedented action, to formally apologize for its repeated failure in the early twentieth century to pass anti-lynching legislation.
21.
Mary Landrieu held high-profile hearings on the mistakes of the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the wake of hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.
22.
Subsequent to the 2006 mid-term elections, in which the Democratic Party gained control of both houses of Congress, Mary Landrieu announced the formation of the "Common Ground Coalition", a group of moderate senators of both parties, with the goal of finding bipartisan consensus on legislative matters.
23.
On December 15,2008, it was announced that Mary Landrieu would become chairwoman of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship for the 111th Congress when former Chairman John Kerry left to lead the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, previously headed by Vice President-elect Joe Biden.
24.
In September 2010, Mary Landrieu announced she would hold up OMB director Jacob Lew's confirmation until the administration lifted or eased a federal freeze on deepwater oil-and-gas drilling.
25.
On December 18,2010, Mary Landrieu voted in favor of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010.
26.
Mary Landrieu wanted additional debate on the timeline and the raise for tipped workers.
27.
Mary Landrieu opposed the public health insurance option in the America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 until the bill was rewritten to send a $300,000,000 payment to Medicaid for her home state.
28.
On November 21,2009, Mary Landrieu voted with fifty-nine other senators to bring the health care bill up for debate.
29.
Mary Landrieu voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in December 2009.
30.
In September 2013, Mary Landrieu voted to restore funding for the ACA that House Republicans had eliminated in their version of the funding bill.
31.
On March 1,2012, Mary Landrieu voted against a measure that would have repealed a birth control mandate in the health care bill.
32.
In 2007, when Democrats took control of the House and Senate, they passed legislation written by Mary Landrieu that authorized FEMA to forgive the loans.
33.
Mary Landrieu voted for the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts in 2005, but in 2006, she opposed Samuel Alito; she voted in favor of cloture to send the nomination to an up-or-down vote.
34.
Mary Landrieu voted for both Sonia Sotomayor in 2009 and Elena Kagan in 2010.
35.
In September 2014, Mary Landrieu revealed that the internal investigation into her flights had concluded that since she had entered the Senate she had improperly charged her Senate office $33,700 for private flights to campaign events.
36.
Mary Landrieu originally said the charter company mistakenly billed Mary Landrieu's Senate office instead of her re-election campaign.
37.
Mary Landrieu was one of the more conservative Democrats in the US Senate.
38.
Mary Landrieu voted to confirm Gina McCarthy as the administrator of the EPA Mary Landrieu supports the Keystone Pipeline and has called for President Obama to approve its construction.
39.
Mary Landrieu has a "C" rating from the National Rifle Association.
40.
Mary Landrieu voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, commonly known as "Obamacare".
41.
Mary Landrieu took to the Senate floor to defend her vote by detailing the timeline of her Medicaid funding request.
42.
Mary Landrieu noted her $300 million request was made before President Obama was sworn into office.
43.
Mary Landrieu said that she would vote for it again if she were given a chance.
44.
Mary Landrieu is a Senior Policy Advisor for Van Ness Feldman, a DC Law Firm.
45.
Mary Landrieu became a strategic adviser to the Walton Family Foundation in April 2015.
46.
Mary Landrieu is a member of the pro-Israel group American Israel Public Affairs Committee.