Mary Landrieu

Mary Loretta Landrieu (born November 23, 1955) is an American entrepreneur and politician who served as a United States senator from Louisiana from 1997 to 2015.

She graduated from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge in 1977 with a degree in sociology, where she was a member of Delta Gamma sorority.

Before entering politics, Landrieu worked as a real estate agent.

She is Italian on her mother's side, and her family was among the large wave of Sicilian immigrants that came to Louisiana during the nineteenth century.

Her mother, Verna Satterlee Landrieu, was the daughter of Kent Satterlee and Olga Helen Macheca.

Landrieu has been repeatedly highlighted by the Order Sons of Italy in America as the first woman of Italian-American heritage to become a US senator.

Her paternal great-grandmother Cerentha Mackey was the illegitimate child of a mixed-race black woman and an unknown father.

Landrieu was first elected to the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1979, serving from 1980 to 1988 and representing a New Orleans district.

She was re-elected to the 90th district in October 1983 with 78% of the vote.

In October 1987, she was succeeded in the 90th district by her brother Mitch.

On January 1, 1987, State Treasurer Mary Evelyn Parker, the longtime Democratic incumbent, resigned with nearly a year and a half left in her fifth term.

Landrieu ran to succeed her in both the special and regularly scheduled elections, both held in October 1987.

No Republican filed to run, so Landrieu faced only Democratic opponents.

She came first on both ballots with 44%.

She defeated two legislative colleagues, State Rep. Kevin P. Reilly, Sr., at the time chief executive officer of Lamar Advertising Company in Baton Rouge, who came second in the special and regular elections, with 33% and 32%, respectively, and State Rep. Claude "Buddy" Leach, a former U.S. Representative, who came third in both elections with 15%.

Tom Burbank, son of Thomas D. Burbank Sr., former head of the state police, came in last in both elections with 9% of the vote.

Reilly decided not to contest a runoff election, known in Louisiana as a "general election", and Landrieu won the treasurer's position by default.

A member of the Democratic Party, Landrieu served as the Louisiana State Treasurer from 1988 to 1996, and in the Louisiana House of Representatives from 1980 to 1988.

Born in Arlington, Virginia, Landrieu was raised in New Orleans, Louisiana.

She is the daughter of Moon Landrieu, former New Orleans mayor and secretary of the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the sister of Mitch Landrieu, a former mayor of New Orleans and Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana.

She received her baccalaureate degree from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge.

In 1991, Landrieu was unopposed for re-election.

On July 25, 1995, The Times-Picayune revealed that as a state representative, Landrieu awarded Tulane University tuition waivers to a former campaign manager.

Landrieu declined to run for a third term as Treasurer, giving up the office to run for governor in the 1995 election.

The other major candidates in the race were Democratic U.S. Representative Cleo Fields; State Senator Murphy J. Foster, Jr., who switched his party affiliation from Democratic to Republican when he filed; Democratic attorney Phil Preis; Republican former Governor Buddy Roemer; and Democratic Lieutenant Governor Melinda Schwegmann.

Landrieu finished third in the state's nonpartisan blanket primary with 18% of the vote, finishing 8,983 votes behind Fields, who came second with 19% of the vote.

Roemer came fourth with 18%, Preis was fifth with 9% and Schwegmann came sixth with 5%.

Foster came first with 26% and went on to defeat Fields in the runoff with 64% of the vote.

Landrieu was succeeded as state treasurer by her fellow Democrat Ken Duncan, a Baton Rouge attorney and businessman.

She won a close race for the U.S. Senate in 1996; she was re-elected by increasing margins in competitive races in 2002 and 2008, but was defeated in 2014 by U.S. Representative Bill Cassidy.

Landrieu was elected in 1996 to the U.S. Senate seat previously held by John Bennett Johnston, Jr. of Shreveport after winning a close and controversial runoff election.

(The runoff election is what other states would call "the general election" of a federal seat.) She defeated state Representative Woody Jenkins of Baton Rouge.

Landrieu came to national attention in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 after she publicly criticized the federal response to the natural disaster.

She chaired the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship from 2009 to 2014, and chaired the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources from 2014 to 2015.

Landrieu was born in Arlington, Virginia, the daughter of Verna (née Satterlee) and Moon Landrieu, who served as mayor of New Orleans.

She is the sister of Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans and lieutenant governor of Louisiana.

She was raised in New Orleans as a Catholic and attended Ursuline Academy of New Orleans.

While a student at Ursuline, Landrieu participated in the Close Up Washington civic education program.

Her opposition to the public option played a major role in the crafting of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as she did not agree to support it until additional concessions were granted to support Louisiana's Medicaid system.

In 2011, she became a cardinal (chair) of the Senate's Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee.