Claudine Schneider | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromRhode Island's2nd district | |
| In office January 3, 1981 – January 3, 1991 | |
| Preceded by | Edward Beard |
| Succeeded by | Jack Reed |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Claudine Cmarada (1947-03-25)March 25, 1947 (age 78) Clairton, Pennsylvania, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse | |
| Education | Rosemont College Windham College (BA) University of Rhode Island |
Claudine Schneider (néeCmarada; born March 25, 1947) is an American politician and executive who served five terms as aRepublicanU.S. representative fromRhode Island from 1981 to 1991. She was the first,[1] and to date only, woman elected to Congress from Rhode Island.
She is the founder of Republicans for Integrity, which describes itself as a network of "Republican former Members of Congress who feel compelled to remind Republican voters about the fundamentals of [the Republican] party and to provide the facts about incumbents' voting records."[2]
Schneider was bornClaudine Cmarada inClairton, Pennsylvania. On her father's side, she is ofSlovak descent.[3] Schneider attended parochial schools. She studied at theUniversity of Barcelona,Spain, andRosemont College (Pennsylvania).She obtained aB.A. degree fromWindham College (Vermont) in 1969. She also attended theUniversity of Rhode Island Program in Community Planning. She married Eric Schneider in 1972 and they divorced in 1985.[4][5]
She was the founder of the Rhode Island Committee on Energy in 1973, and was appointed executive director of theConservation Law Foundation in 1974. She became Federal coordinator of Rhode Island Coastal Zone Management Program in 1978. She worked as a producer and host of a public affairs television program inProvidence from 1978 to 1979.
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Schneider was elected as a Republican to the97th Congress and was re-elected to the four succeeding Congresses, serving from January 3, 1981, to January 3, 1991 forRhode Island's 2nd congressional district.
Schneider’s hallmark legislative initiatives in Congress centered on promoting clean energy (especially energy efficiency) policies and preventing global warming through federal action and international cooperation. Her 1989Global Warming Prevention Act established the goal of a 20% reduction in atmospheric CO2 levels from 1988 levels by 2000 through a mix of federal and state energy policies. This comprehensive omnibus bill was revenue-neutral and enjoyed bipartisan support from 144 Members of Congress. Although it did not pass into law in its entirety, two of the bill’s titles were subsequently incorporated into federal energy regulatory policies: creation of the nation’s first appliance energy efficiency standards (which became the Energy Star program) in the bill’s Title II and the creation of least-cost electric utility planning in the bill's Title I.[6]
As a freshman Member of Congress in 1981, Schneider led a bipartisan House coalition and an unusual alliance of conservative groups and environmental advocacy organizations in opposition to the proposedClinch River Breeder Reactor project duringdebate in the House Science Committee. In subsequent House floor debate on the project, she called it a“boondoggle” pushed by corporate special interests, costing taxpayers billions of dollars.
In 1984, Schneider introducedlegislation tohalt all fishing for striped bass to protect dwindling stocks of this popular sport fish along the U.S. Atlantic coast for three years. This bill kicked off the legislative process that resulted in the passage into law of theAtlantic Striped Bass Conservation Act of 1984, illustrating the “successes that can be achieved when state and federal agencies and Congress join forces to rebuild coastal fisheries.”
A longtime advocate of environmental protection and hazardous waste-prevention measures,[7][8] Schneider was responsible in 1985 for creating the first economic incentive to reduce hazardous waste production. Her measure, the “waste-end” tax – was endorsed by the White House and included in theHouse version of the Superfund Bill.
Schneider was the prime Republican House sponsor of theOcean Dumping Ban Act of 1988 to prohibit dumping of sewage sludge and industrial waste into the ocean after 1991.
Schneider’s other legislative initiatives included the cofounding of the Congressional Competitiveness Caucus[9] in 1987 together with Hewlett Packard CEO John Young. The caucus hosted briefings by top corporate CEOs. In 1994, she was appointed by President Bill Clinton to theCompetitiveness Policy Council.
In 1986, Schneider organized a series of television debates and exchanges between Members of Congress and the Soviet parliament (the Supreme Soviet) through satellite hookup between the capitals of the two superpowers. Initially dubbed “CongressBridge,” the goal of Schneider and her congressional colleague Rep. George Brown was “to break the 27-year public silence between Soviet and American politicians since the 1959 Moscow ‘kitchen debate’ between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev.” In the United States, the series of forums between the two countries’ legislators aired on ABC in 1987 as "Capital to Capital," and Schneider went on to receive an Emmy Award for her role in initiating and co-producing with Peter Jennings these live and unedited programs.
In 1988, Schneider sponsoredlegislation requiring U.S. cooperation with foreign countries on biodiversity and environmental protection. Her bill was signed into law on October 25, 1988 by President Ronald Reagan.
Noteworthy environmental and clean energy leaders who had worked on her Congressional staff includeIan Bowles, who later became Massachusetts Secretary of Energy and Environmental Affairs, andMichael P. Totten.
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She did not stand for re-election to her House seat in 1990, instead running in the concurrentU.S. Senate election. However, she was defeated by long-time incumbent SenatorClaiborne Pell, losing 61.8% to 38.2%.[10]
After leaving Congress, Schneider served as a member of the faculty of theJohn F. Kennedy School of Government ofHarvard University.
In 1992, Schneider co-founded Energia Global, an international energy efficiency and renewable energy development company with a joint venture in Costa Rica, helping make it one of a handful of nearly carbon-neutral countries. Fulfilling a ten-year exit strategy, the company was sold to ERGA, which at the time was the world's largest producer of energy from renewable sources.
She then moved to Colorado and became the senior vice president of Econergy International, a multi-service energy and carbon markets consultancy and owner/operator of renewable energy projects throughout the Americas.[11]
Schneider enlisted 50 Fortune 500 corporations, including Raytheon, Bank of America, Target and Tiffany’s, as partners in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA)Climate Leaders Program, leading to her nomination by EPA as a “Climate Leader.”
Schneider has served on the boards of various companies and advocacy groups, and her consulting clients have included National Grid and other utilities, EPA, DOE, INBio (Costa Rica), the Policy Center for Marine Biosciences and Technology, Wheelabrator Technologies as well as the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Air Force.
Areas of focus throughout her consulting work include strategic planning, futures-scenario design, policy development and implementation, organizational development, ecological economics, lobbying, marketing and communications. She has provided keynote speeches at events around the world, occasionally in French or Spanish.
Schneider has contributed to numerous journals and books, including “The Planetary Interest’ from Oxford University Press, in which former elected officials from a variety of countries were asked to address a particular challenge. As the only American among the book’s contributors, she was commissioned to address “consumption."
In 2023 Schneider was one of six petitioners represented byCitizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington inTrump v. Anderson, a successful case before theColorado Supreme Court, rulingDonald Trumpineligible for the 2024 presidential election on grounds of violating the14th Amendment to the United States Constitution.[14][15] The case went to the United States Supreme Court, which reversed the Colorado Supreme Court’s decision.
| U.S. House of Representatives | ||
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| Preceded by | Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromRhode Island's 2nd congressional district 1981–1991 | Succeeded by |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Republican nominee forU.S. Senator fromRhode Island (Class 2) 1990 | Succeeded by |
| U.S. order of precedence (ceremonial) | ||
| Preceded byas Former U.S. Representative | Order of precedence of the United States as Former U.S. Representative | Succeeded byas Former U.S. Representative |
This article incorporatespublic domain material fromBiographical Directory of the United States Congress.Federal government of the United States.
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