Early Life
Hillary Rodham was born in Chicago, Illinois, and was raised in a Methodist family in Park Ridge, Illinois. Her father, Hugh Ellsworth Rodham, a conservative, was an executive in the textile industry, and her mother, Dorothy Emma Howell Rodham, was a homemaker. She has two brothers, Hugh and Tony. She attended Maine East High School where she served as class president, was a member of the debating time, National Honor Society and student council & received the schools first ever science award.In 1964 (at age 16) she campaigned for Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater.
UndergraduateIn 1965 she enrolled at Wellesley College Massachusetts where she became active in politics, serving as president of the Wellesley College Chapter of the College Republicans.
- After attending the "Wellesley in Washington" program her political views became more in tune with American liberalism and she joined the Democratic Party.
- She was named validictorian and became the first student in Wellesley College history to deliver a commencement address. (Text of her speech) The Associated Press reported at the time that her speech received a standing ovation lasting seven minutes. She was featured in an article published in Life magazine because her speech was controversial in that it criticized Republican Senator Edward W. Brooke, who had given his remarks before her.
In 1969 she entered Yale Law School, where she served on the Board of Editors of Yale Review of Law and Social Action and worked with underprivileged children at the Yale-New Haven Hospital. She was awarded a grant to work at the Children's Defense Fund.
- During the summer of 1971, she traveled to Washington to work on Senator Walter Mondale's subcommittee on migrant workers. For the summer of 1972, Rodham worked in the western states for Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern's campaign.
- She volunteered at the Yale Child Study Center, learning about new research on early childhood brain development. She also took on cases of child abuse at Yale-New Haven Hospital and worked at the city Legal Services, providing free legal service to the poor.
- She received a Juris Doctor (J. D.) degree from Yale in 1973, having written a thesis on the rights of children.
During her post-graduate study at the Yale Child Study Center, Rodham served as staff attorney for the Children's Defense Fund, and as a consultant to the Carnegie Council on Children.
- She joined the presidential impeachment inquiry staff advising the Judiciary Committee of the United States House of Representatives during the Watergate Scandal. Rodham became a faculty member (one of only two women in the faculty) at the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville School of Law, where Bill Clinton was teaching as well.
- On October 11, 1975, Hillary Rodham and Bill Clinton were married in Fayetteville, Arkansas. They lived there briefly and then moved to the state capital of Little Rock, from which Bill conducted his first campaign, for U.S. Congress.
- In 1976 she joined Rose Law Firm, specializing in intellectual property cases while doing child advocacy cases pro bono. In 1979, she became the first woman to be made a full partner of Rose Law Firm.
- President Jimmy Carter appointed her to the board of the Legal Services Corporation in 1978. In 1978, with the election of her husband as Governor of Arkansas, she became First Lady of Arkansas, her title for a total of 12 years.
- On February 27, 1980, she gave birth to Chelsea, their only child. In 1980, Bill Clinton was defeated in his re-election bid for governor and the couple left the statehouse. In February 1982, Bill Clinton announced his bid to regain the office, which would be successful; at the same time, Hillary began using the name Hillary Rodham Clinton.
- Cochaired the Arkansas Educational Standards Committee, where she successfully fought (against some opposition) for improved testing standards of new teachers.
- Chaired the Rural Health Advisory Committee and introduced a pioneering program called "Arkansas' Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youth," which trains parents to work with their children in preschool preparedness and literacy.
- Was named Arkansas Woman of the Year in 1983 and Arkansas Mother of the Year in 1984.
- Throughout her time as First Lady, Clinton continued to practice law with the Rose Law Firm. In 1988 and 1991 National Law Journal named Clinton one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America.
- Clinton co-founded the Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families and served on the boards of the Arkansas Children's Hospital Legal Services and the Children's Defense Fund.
- From 1985 to 1992, Clinton served on the Board of Directors for both TCBY ("The Country's Best Yogurt") and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
First Lady of the United States
After Bill Clinton was elected to the White House in 1992, Hillary Rodham Clinton became the First Lady of the United States in 1993. She was the first First Lady to hold a post-graduate degree and the first to have her own successful professional career.
- In 1993 she was appointed head of a Task Force on National Health Care Reform. The recommendations of this task force, commonly called the Clinton health care plan and nicknamed "Hillarycare" by its opponents, failed to gain enough support to come to a floor vote in either house of Congress, although both had Democratic majorities, and was abandoned in September, 1994.
- In 1997 she initiated the Children's Health Insurance Program, a federal effort that provided state support for those children whose parents were unable to provide them with health coverage.
- She successfully sought to increase the research funding for illnesses such as prostate cancer and childhood asthma at the National Institutes of Health. She also worked to solve the mystery behind the illnesses that were affecting veterans of the Gulf War.
- She initiated and shepherded the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997.
- Clinton hosted numerous White House conferences that related to children's health, including early childhood development and school violence.
- With Attorney General Janet Reno, Clinton helped to create the Department of Justice's Violence Against Women office.
- She was one of the few international figures at the time who spoke out against the treatment of Afghani women by Islamist fundamentalist Taliban that had seized control of Afghanistan. One of the programs she helped create was Vital Voices, a U.S.-sponsored initiative to promote the participation of international women in their nation's political process.
- She initiated the Save America's Treasures program, a national effort that matched federal funds to private donations to rescue from deterioration and neglect, or completely restore, many iconic historic items and sites.
The Junior Senator From NY
When long-time New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan announced his retirement, prominent Democratic politicians and advisors, including New York Representative Charles Rangel, urged Clinton to run for the New York Senate seat. When she chose to run, the Clinton's purchased a home in Chappaqua, New York, north of New York City. She became the first First Lady of the United States to be a candidate for elected office. She was initially expected to face New York City's Mayor Rudy Giuliani, but Giuliani withdrew after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. Instead, Clinton faced a lesser-known candidate, Rick Lazio, who was a Congressman representing Suffolk County on Long Island. The contest drew considerable national attention and both candidates were well-funded. By the end of the race, Democrat Clinton and Republicans Lazio and Giuliani had spent a combined $78 million.
While Clinton had a solid base of support in New York City, candidates and observers expected the race to be decided in upstate New York where 45 percent of the state's voters live. During the campaign, Clinton vowed to improve the economic picture in upstate New York, promising that her plan would deliver 200,000 New York jobs over six years. Her plan included specific tax credits with the purpose of rewarding job creation and encouraging business investment, especially in the high-tech sector. She called for targeted personal tax cuts for college tuition and long-term care. Clinton began her campaign by visiting every county in the state, in a "listening tour" of small-group settings.
During the race, she spent considerable time in traditionally Republican upstate regions. Clinton faced charges of carpet bagging since she had never resided in the State of New York nor directly participated in state politics prior to her Senate race. Opponents made the carpet bagging issue a focal point throughout the race and during debates. Exit polls revealed that more than two-thirds of the voters dismissed the carpet bagging issue as unimportant.
Clinton won the election on November 7 with 55% of the vote to Lazio's 43%. Clinton won the traditionally Democratic base of New York City by large margins, carried suburban Westchester County, lost Lazio's home base of Long Island, and showed surprising strength in upstate regions including Buffalo, Rochester and Syracuse.
Senate Activities
- Sits on five Senate Committees with a total of nine subcommittee assignments: the Senate Committee on Armed Services with three subcommittee assignments, on Airland, on Emerging Threats and Capabilities, and on Readiness and Management Support; the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee with three subcommittee assignments on Clean Air, Wetlands, Private Property, and Nuclear Safety, on Fisheries, Wildlife, and Water and on Superfund, Waste Control, and Risk Assessment; the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, with two subcommittee assignments, on Aging and on Children and Families; and the Senate Special Committee on Aging.
- Has made homeland security one of her top issues following the September 11 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in downtown New York City. She worked with Senator Charles Schumer to secure $21.4 billion in funding to assist cleanup and recovery, to provide health tracking for first responders and volunteers at Ground Zero, and to create grants for redevelopment.In 2005, Clinton issued two studies that examined the disbursement of federal homeland security funds to local communities and first responders.
- Clinton has pressed for education, labor, and technology infrastructure programs to assist economic development in upstate New York and similar regions, with mixed results. Though she had promised to bring 200,000 jobs to the area during her 2000 campaign, the entire state has lost over 170,000 manufacturing jobs since then. In 2003, Clinton touted her success in soliciting offshoring firm Tata Consultancy Services to set up shop in economically beleaguered Buffalo, New York. She was criticized when it was discovered that much of Tata's business involves outsourcing American jobs overseas.
- In 2005 she co-sponsored with Senator Lindsey Graham the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition proposal regarding incentives and rewards for completely domestic American manufacturing companies.
- In June, 2005, she united with Senator Bill Frist to push for the modernization of medical records, claiming that thousands of deaths caused by medical mistakes, such as misreading prescriptions, can be prevented by greater reliance on computer technology.
- In July 2005, Senator Clinton called for the Federal Trade Commission to investigate how hidden sex scenes showed up in the controversial video game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.
- Recently she sought to establish an independent, bipartisan panel patterned after the 9/11 Commission to investigate what went wrong with federal, state and local governments' response to Hurricane Katrina. She failed to win over a two-thirds majority needed to overcome procedural hurdles in the Senate rules.
- On November 29, 2005, Clinton, together with Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh introduced the Family Entertainment Protection Act. The act is intended to protect children from inappropriate content found in video games.
- In July 2004 and June 2006, Clinton voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment that sought to prohibit same-sex marriage; the Amendment fell well short of passage both times.
In 2006 Clinton won the election on November 7 with 67% of the vote to her opponent Spencer's 31%, carrying all but 4 of New York's 62 counties.
Election 2008
Senator Hillary Clinton officially announced she was setting up a presidential exploratory committee on January 20th 2007. She made the announcement on a video posted to her official Web site entitled "I'm In". The video was followed by three "Web Chats" (1/22, 1/23, 1/24) where visitors were invited to submit questions Clinton answered live on the Internet through Web cam. The third and final of these chats took place just before the Presidents State of the Union Address.
On Feb 2nd 2007 she announced that "If we in Congress don't end this war before January 2009, as president, I will".
On the Issues
Speeches
- 1997 - United Nations Economic and Social Council
- 1996 - DNC Address ('It Takes a Village')
- 1995 Remarks to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women Plenary Session
- 1969 - Wellesley College 1969 Student Commencement Speech May 31, 1969
Books
