Katherine Clark

Katherine Marlea Clark (born July 17, 1963) is an American lawyer and politician who has served as House Minority Whip since 2023 and the U.S. representative for Massachusetts's 5th congressional district since 2013.

She previously served as Assistant Speaker from 2021 to 2023 and Vice Chair of the House Democratic Caucus from 2019 to 2021.

Katherine Marlea Clark was born on July 17, 1963, in New Haven, Connecticut.

She attended St. Lawrence University, Cornell Law School, and Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government.

She studied in Nagoya, Japan, in 1983.

In her early career, she worked as an attorney in Chicago.

She then moved to Colorado, where she worked as a clerk for Judge Alfred A. Arraj of the United States District Court for the District of Colorado and later as a staff attorney for the Colorado District Attorneys' Council.

Born in Connecticut, Clark worked as an attorney in several states before moving to Massachusetts in 1995, where she worked in state government.

She moved to Massachusetts in 1995 and became general counsel for the state Office of Child Care Services.

In 2001, Clark moved to Melrose, where she was elected to the Melrose School Committee, taking her seat in January 2002.

She joined the Melrose School Committee in 2002, becoming committee chair in 2005.

She first ran for the Massachusetts Senate in 2004 and lost to Republican incumbent Richard Tisei.

In January 2005, she was unanimously elected chairwoman of the Melrose School Committee.

In 2006, she ran for the 32nd Middlesex seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives when incumbent Mike Festa began a run for Middlesex district attorney but withdrew after he dropped out of the race.

Clark was appointed co-chair of Victory 2006, the state Democratic Party's campaign and fundraising effort for the 2006 gubernatorial election.

She spent some time as chief of policy and government relations in the Massachusetts Attorney General's office.

Festa resigned his state House seat in October 2007 to become secretary of elder affairs in the Deval Patrick administration, and Clark entered the special election to succeed him.

During the campaign, she emphasized her experience as an attorney and made "developing stability in state aid" her top policy issue.

She won the Democratic primary in January with 65% of the vote, defeating two other Melrose Democrats.

She defeated Republican real estate businessman Mark B. Hutchison, 63% to 37%.

Clark was a member of the Massachusetts House of Representatives from 2008 to 2011 and the Massachusetts Senate from 2011 to 2013.

She was first elected to the state legislature in 2008, and contributed to legislation regarding criminal justice, education, and municipal pensions.

In November 2008, she was reelected to a full term unopposed.

Sworn in on March 13, 2008, Clark represented Melrose and Wakefield.

She served on both the education, judiciary, and municipalities and the regional government committees.

When Tisei resigned from the state senate to run for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, Clark ran for his seat.

In the Democratic primary, she defeated Stoneham attorney Michael S. Day, 64%–36%.

In the November 2010 general election, she defeated Republican Craig Spadafora, 52%–48%.

Clark was sworn in on January 5, 2011.

She supports abortion rights and has been endorsed in her campaigns by NARAL Pro-Choice Massachusetts and the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund.

In 2011, Clark was co-chair of the Joint Committee on Public Service, where she was lead author of the Senate version of a bill to reform municipal pensions.

For her work in 2011, she received legislator of the year awards from the Massachusetts Municipal Association and the Massachusetts Police Association.

In 2012, she authored a law that takes steps to ensure that all Massachusetts students read at grade level by third grade.

Also in 2012, her bill extending restraining orders in domestic violence cases to cover victims' pets, which are often used as pawns in abusive relationships, was signed as part of a larger law on animal shelters.

She is in her sixth term in Congress, having won the 2013 special election for the U.S. House of Representatives to succeed Ed Markey in the 5th district, and sits on the House Appropriations Committee.

Clark's district includes many of Boston's northern and western satellite cities and suburbs, such as Medford, Framingham, Woburn, Waltham, and her home city of Revere.

In 2013, she co-sponsored a bill expanding the state's wiretapping authority, which was strictly limited under existing law, in order to help police better investigate violent street crime.

At the same time, she co-sponsored a bill to secure electronic privacy protections, requiring police to have probable cause before investigating the electronic records of individuals.

She filed another bill tightening sex offender laws, imposing stricter penalties and making offender data more accessible to agencies and the public.

The Women's Bar Association of Massachusetts named Clark its 2013 Legislator of the Year for her service on women's issues.