Biography
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Mary L. Landrieu has been a fighter for Louisiana since she was first elected to the Louisiana state legislature at the age of 23. The first woman from Louisiana elected to a full term in the U.S. Senate, in 1996, she is the state’s senior senator, an Appropriations Committee member and has been ranked by the nonpartisan Congress.org as the tenth most effective legislator in the Senate.
With Republican Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, Senator Landrieu co-chairs the Common Ground Coalition, the Senate’s centrist caucus. In March 2008, she was recognized as the Senate’s most moderate member by National Journal magazine, which called her the “ideological center” of the Senate.
In recent years, Senator Landrieu has been the leading voice in Washington for the Gulf Coast recovery effort in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita and the failures of the federal levee system, securing billions in recovery dollars and working to jumpstart recovery projects. She chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Disaster Recovery Subcommittee, and is committed to reforming the Federal Emergency Management Agency to ensure the nation’s disaster response arm is speedy and effective the next time a disaster strikes the United States, be it natural or manmade.
As a member of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Senator Landrieu is a strong and effective voice for Louisiana, bringing her record of fiscal discipline to a committee that approves more than $300 billion in federal discretionary spending each year. From this seat on what is considered the most powerful panel on Capitol Hill, she fights for Louisiana’s jobs and economic interests and the funding the state needs to rebuild from the 2005 hurricanes.
Senator Landrieu, a member of the Energy Committee, coauthored the landmark Domenici-Landrieu Gulf of Mexico Energy Security Act, which was signed into law in 2006. The bill expanded oil and gas production in the Gulf of Mexico by more than 8 million acres and shares the revenues with Louisiana to restore and protect the eroding wetlands along its Gulf Coast.
She is also a member of the Small Business Committee, where she has tirelessly championed small business interests across Louisiana and worked to get the 125,000 small and midsized Gulf Coast businesses impacted by the hurricanes back on their feet.
Senator Landrieu is married to Frank Snellings of Monroe, Louisiana, and has two children.