Connie Morella
Constance Albanese Morella, 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).
Early life
She was born Constance Albanese in Somerville, Massachusetts on February 12, 1931. 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 soon displanted her educational one.
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 three additional terms, before running for United States Congress.
Congressional career
In 1986 she was elected U.S. Representative from the 8th Congressional District of Maryland. 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 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 earned a reputation for "independence." She opposed her party's positions on abortion, gun control, 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. Indeed, by many surveys, her voting record was consistently one of the most liberal.
Morella's politics came under pressure after a conservative sweep of the 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 voted against all four articles of impeachment prepared against President Bill Clinton.
Still, as a popular Republican representing a Democratic district of a largely Democratic state, Morella became one of the most targeted Congressmen in the Maryland delegation, and the low popularity of the Republican-controlled Congress undermined her own. 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 Christophre Van Hollen, Jr. and forcing Morella to run against popular Delegate and Kennedy political family member Mark K. Shriver.
The final redistricting plan was less ambitious, restoring an eastern, heavily Democratic spur of Montgomery County removed in the 1990 redistricting to the 8th District. Although it forced Van Hollen and Shriver to run against each other in an expensive primary, the shift pushed the district into the Democratic column, and Van Hollen defeated Morella in 2002.
Post-Congressional career
To the consternation of Morella's conservative critics, 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.