Connie Morella

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Connie Morella
Connie Morella
Born February 12, 1931
Somerville, Massachusetts

Constance Albanese Morella (born February 12, 1931), popularly known as "Connie," is a Republican United States politician currently serving as Permanent Representative to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

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[edit] Early life

She was born Constance Albanese in Somerville, Massachusetts. After graduating from Somerville High School in 1948 she earned an Associate of Arts from Boston University in 1950 and an A.B. from the same institution in 1954. Although raised in a family of blue-collar Democrats, she became a Republican after meeting Anthony C. Morella, who had worked for liberal Republicans John Lindsay, Nelson Rockefeller, Charles Mathias, and others. After they wed, the couple moved to Bethesda, Maryland.

Connie Morella became a secondary school teacher in the Montgomery County, Maryland public schools from 1957 to 1961. She graduated from American University with an M.A. in 1967 and was an instructor there from 1968 to 1970, when she became a professor at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland. She continued to teach until 1985, but her political career gradually displaced her educational one.

[edit] Political career

Morella was appointed as a founding member to the Montgomery County Commission for Women, an advisory women's advocacy body, in 1971, and elected its president in 1973. She also became active in the League of Women Voters. In 1974, she ran unsuccessfully for the Maryland House of Delegates from the 16th District (Bethesda), but in 1978 not only won a seat but received more votes than the three incumbents. She was returned to the state legislature for an additional term, before running for United States Congress.

[edit] Congressional career

In 1986 she was elected U.S. Representative from the 8th Congressional District. She was the first woman to represent Montgomery County. Although a Republican in an area which had become heavily Democratic, she proved highly popular among her constituents and won reelection seven times, serving until 2002.

Morella was able to survive as a Republican in a heavily Democratic district by earning a reputation for independence. She opposed her party's positions on abortion, gun control, gay rights, and the environmental movement, voted for government funding of contraceptives and needle exchange programs for drug addicts, and favored the legalization of medical marijuana. She also received the support of organized labor and opposed many tax cuts. She voted against declaring English the official language of the United States and in 1996 against a bill overwhelmingly approved by Congress and signed by President Bill Clinton, to combat illegal immigration. Morella was the only Republican in the entire Congress to vote against approving the use of military force in Iraq in 1991 and in 2002. Indeed, by many surveys, her voting record was consistently one of the most liberal.

Morella was active in human rights, women's health, and domestic violence issues in Congress, and served on the Science and Government Reform Committees. She was U.S. representative to the 1994 U.N. International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo and co-chair of the Congressional delegation to the 1999 U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Among the legislation she sponsored were the 1992 Battered Women's Testimony Act, which provided funds for indigent women to hire expert testimony in domestic abuse cases, and the Judicial Training Act, which funded programs to educate judges about domestic violence, especially in child custody cases.

Morella's politics came under pressure after her party took control of the House in 1994 Congressional elections. Not only did she did not sign the Contract with America developed by her colleagues, but she voted against many of its provisions. She did not openly challenge the new House leadership until 1997, however, when she voted "present" for Speaker of the House instead of for the incumbent, Newt Gingrich. In 1998, she was one of five Republicans to oppose all four articles of impeachment against Clinton.

As a Republican congresswoman representing a heavily Democratic district in an increasingly Democratic state, Morella became one of the most targeted members in the Maryland delegation, and the low popularity of the Republican-controlled Congress undermined her own. She tried to portray herself as giving her district a place at the table, but Democrats claimed that a vote for Morella was a vote to keep Tom DeLay and other Republicans unpopular in her district in power. It was virtually taken for granted that if Morella retired, she would be succeeded by a Democrat. It was also taken for granted that it would be a long time before another Republican won the seat if Morella retired or was defeated.

Morella was explicitly named the top target for gerrymandering by Maryland Senate President Thomas V. "Mike" Miller after her relatively narrow reelection in 2000. During redistricting after the 2000 Census, one proposal went so far as to divide her district in two, effectively giving one to State Senator Chris Van Hollen and forcing Morella to run against popular Delegate and Kennedy political family member Mark Shriver.

The final redistricting plan was less ambitious, but still made the already heavily Democratic 8th even more Democratic. It restored a heavily Democratic spur of eastern Montgomery County removed in the 1990 redistricting and added a dozen precincts in strongly Democratic Prince George's County. Although it forced Van Hollen and Shriver to run against each other in an expensive primary, Van Hollen defeated Morella in 2002 with 52% of the vote to Morella's 47%.

Many pundits believed that the 8th had been redrawn to make it impossible for Morella to win. Van Hollen trounced her in the Prince George's portion of the district, an area that Morella did not know and that did not know her. However, it is worth noting that Van Hollen narrowly defeated Morella in the Montgomery County portion of the district, although Morella won in the precincts she'd represented since 1993. Morella had represented nearly all of the Montgomery County share of the current 8th at one time or another. It is more likely that the unpopularity of the House Republican leadership finally proved too much for her to overcome.

[edit] Post-Congressional career

President George W. Bush appointed her United States Permanent Representative to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on July 11, 2003. She was unanimously confirmed by the United States Senate on July 31 and sworn in on September 15 of that year, becoming the first former member of Congress to serve as ambassador to the OECD. She is a honorary board member of the National Organization of Italian American Women.

[edit] Awards and Honors

In 1999, Morella received an Honorary Doctorate from Elizabethtown College, Pennsylvania.

[edit] External links

Preceded by:
Michael D. Barnes		 United States Representative for the 8th Congressional District of Maryland
1987–2003		 Succeeded by:
Chris Van Hollen
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org../../../c/o/n/Connie_Morella_594c.html"