Senator Jeanne Shaheen was born on January 28th, 1947 in St. Charles, Missouri. Her family moved to Selinsgrove, Pennsylvania where she graduated from high school. Senator Shaheen then attended Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, graduating in 1969 with her Bachelors degree in English. She then went on to earn a Masters degree from the University of Mississippi in 1973. During her studies at the University of Mississippi she was married to her husband, Bill Shaheen with whom she has three children and seven grandchildren. Upon her graduation, she and her husband moved to Madbury, New Hampshire, where Senator Shaheen taught at a local school and operated a small business with her husband.
Upon their arrival in New Hampshire, Senator Shaheen and her husband became politically active, working on a few Democratic campaigns. In 1990, Shaheen ran for, and was elected to the New Hampshire State Senate. She served in the Senate until 1996, when she was elected Governor of New Hampshire. She was the first woman to be elected governor in New Hampshire, although not the first to serve. She was subsequently re-elected in 1998, and in 2000. In 2002, she decided against running for gubernatorial re-election, opting instead to make a bid for United States Senate. However, she lost the election to Senator John E. Sununu by a slight margin, capturing 47 percent of the vote to his 51. After teaching at Harvard in 2004, and being named director of Harvard’s Institute of Politics in 2005, Shaheen successfully ran for, and was elected to the United States Senate in 2008, beating out John E. Sununu with 52 percent of the vote to his 45.
An advocate for families, Shaheen cosponsored and voted for the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, which helped eliminate tobacco advertising aimed towards children. She also co-authored the Medicare Transitional Care Act, which provides follow-up care for discharged hospital patients in an effort to cut down the need for re-hospitalization. The Medicare Transitional Care Act was passed in 2010. Shaheen is also an advocate for education, voting to pass the Student Aid and Fiscal Responsibility Act, which increased Pell Grants and cut the middlemen out of student loans, with the Federal Government now being the direct loan provider. She is a LGBT rights advocate, supporting same-sex marriage and the repeal of ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’. She currently sits on 4 committees, the Committee on Foreign Relations, the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, the Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, and the Committee on Armed Services. She is also the Chairwoman of the Subcommittee on European Affairs, part of the Committee on Foreign Relations. |
