Connie Morella | |
|---|---|
 | |
| United States Ambassador to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development | |
| In office August 1, 2003 – August 6, 2007 | |
| President | George W. Bush |
| Preceded by | Jeanne Phillips |
| Succeeded by | Christopher Egan |
| Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromMaryland's8th district | |
| In office January 3, 1987 – January 3, 2003 | |
| Preceded by | Michael Barnes |
| Succeeded by | Chris Van Hollen |
| Member of theMaryland House of Delegates from the 16th district | |
| In office January 10, 1979 – January 3, 1987 | |
| Preceded by | John Ward |
| Succeeded by | Brian Frosh Gilbert Genn |
| Personal details | |
| Born | Constance Albanese (1931-02-12)February 12, 1931 (age 94) Somerville, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Political party | Republican |
| Spouse | |
| Education | Boston University (BA) American University (MA) |
Constance Morella (/məˈrɛlə/; néeAlbanese; born February 12, 1931) is an American politician and diplomat. She representedMaryland's 8th congressional district in theUnited States House of Representatives from 1987 to 2003. She served as Permanent Representative from the U.S. to theOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) from 2003 to 2007. She is onAmerican University's faculty as an Ambassador in Residence for the Women & Politics Institute. She was appointed to theAmerican Battle Monuments Commission (ABMC) by PresidentBarack Obama in 2010.
She was born Constance Albanese inSomerville, Massachusetts. After graduating from Somerville High School in 1948, she attendedBoston University, where she earned an Associate of Arts in 1950 and a Bachelor of Arts in 1954. Although she was raised in a family ofblue-collarDemocrats, she became aRepublican after meeting Anthony C. Morella, who had worked forliberal RepublicansJohn Lindsay,Nelson Rockefeller,Charles Mathias, and others. After they wed, the couple moved toBethesda, Maryland. After Connie Morella's sister died of cancer, Tony and Connie Morella adopted her six children to join their own three children.
Morella became a secondary school teacher inMontgomery County Public Schools in Maryland from 1957 to 1961. She graduated fromAmerican University with an M.A. in 1967 and was an instructor there from 1968 to 1970, when she became a professor atMontgomery College inRockville, Maryland. She continued to teach until 1985, when she left teaching to fully focus on her political career.
In 1971 Morella was appointed as a founding member to the Montgomery County Commission for Women, an advisory women's advocacy body, and she was elected its president in 1973. She became active in theLeague of Women Voters. In 1974, she ran for theMaryland House of Delegates from the 16th District (Bethesda), but did not win. She ran again in 1978, winning the seat and receiving more votes than the three previous incumbents. She was reelected for an additional term, before running forUnited States Congress.
In 1986, Morella ran for the open Congressional seat inMaryland's 8th congressional district. The district was being vacated by DemocratMichael Barnes, who was running for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate. Morella's opponent in the general election was State Senator Stewart Bainum, a multimillionaire business executive who consistently outpolled her throughout most of the campaign.
A major turning point came when Morella unexpectedly won endorsements fromThe Baltimore Sun andThe Washington Post. She was the first woman to hold this seat. Although she was a Republican in an area that had become heavily Democratic, she proved highly popular among her constituents and won re-election seven times, serving until 2002.
Morella opposes her party's positions onabortion,gun control,gay rights, and theenvironmental movement, voted for government funding ofcontraceptives andneedle exchange programs fordrug addicts, and favored the legalization ofmedical marijuana. She received some support fromorganized labor and opposed many tax cuts. Morella, however, voted against President Clinton's1993 budget, as all other Congressional Republicans did.[1] She voted against declaringEnglish the official language of theUnited States[2] and, in 1996, against a bill overwhelmingly approved by Congress and signed by PresidentBill Clinton to combatillegal immigration.[citation needed]
In 1996, Morella was one of only five Republicans to vote against the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act. In 1998, she was one of only three Republicans to vote against renaming the Washington National Airport theRonald Reagan Washington National Airport.[3] Morella was the only Republican in the entire Congress to have voted against approving theuse of military force in Iraq in 1991 and again in 2002. She was active in human rights, women's health, anddomestic violence issues in Congress, and served on theScience andGovernment Reform Committees.[citation needed]
Morella was U.S. representative to the 1994U.N.International Conference on Population and Development inCairo and co-chair of the Congressional delegation to the 1995 U.N.Fourth World Conference on Women inBeijing. Among the legislation she sponsored were the 1992 Battered Women's Testimony Act, which provided funds for indigent women to hire expert testimony in domestic abuse cases, and the Judicial Training Act, which funded programs to educate judges about domestic violence, especially in child custody cases.
Morella came under greater pressure after her party took control of the House in 1994 Congressional elections. Although she signed theContract with America developed by Newt Gingrich, she had a mixed record supporting the subsequent Republican majority in Congress. She did not openly challenge the new House leadership until 1997 when she voted "present" forSpeaker of the House instead of for the incumbent,Newt Gingrich. In 1998, she was one of four Republicans, along withAmo Houghton andPeter T. King of New York andChris Shays of Connecticut, to oppose all fourarticles ofimpeachment against Clinton during theLewinsky scandal.
As a Republican representing an affluent Democratic district in an increasingly Democratic state, Morella faced a succession of increasingly strong Democratic challengers. While she managed to fend them all off, even in the big Democratic years of 1992, 1996, and 1998, the low popularity of the Republican-controlled Congress gradually undermined her. She tried to portray herself as giving her district a place at the table, but over time, Morella's Democratic opponents claimed that a vote for Morella was a vote to keepTom DeLay and other Republicans unpopular to district voters in power.
Maryland Senate PresidentThomas V. "Mike" Miller stated that he intended to draw Morella's district out from under her after her relatively narrow reelection in 2000.[4] The Democrats controlled both the State Legislature and the Governor's Office in 2000, thus controlling theredistricting for the2000 Census. Staffers from Senate President Miller, House Speaker Cas Taylor, and GovernorParris Glendening drew new maps togerrymander out Morella and fellow moderate RepublicanBob Ehrlich.[5] One proposal went so far as to divide her district in two, effectively giving one to State SenatorChris Van Hollen and forcing Morella to run against popular Delegate andKennedy political family memberMark Shriver.
The final redistricting plan was less ambitious but still made the already heavily Democratic 8th district even more Democratic. It restored a heavily Democratic spur of eastern Montgomery County removed in the 1990 redistricting and added nine precincts inPrince George's County fromAl Wynn's heavily Democratic4th district.[5] Although it forced Van Hollen and Shriver to run against each other in an expensiveprimary, Van Hollen defeated Morella in 2002 with 52 percent of the vote to Morella's 47 percent (Morella would have narrowly won re-election in her previous district, according to election returns). Proving just how Democratic this new district is, the Republicans have only put up nominal challengers in the 8th since Morella's defeat; none of them have ever won more than 40 percent of the vote.
In 2013, Morella signed an amicus curiae brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support ofsame-sex marriage during theHollingsworth v. Perry case.[6]
Morella publicly endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democrat, in the 2020 US Presidential election, over Republican incumbent Donald Trump.
PresidentGeorge W. Bush appointed her United States Permanent Representative to theOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on July 11, 2003.
She was unanimously confirmed by theUnited States Senate on July 31 and sworn in on October 8 of that year, becoming the first former member of Congress to serve asambassador to the OECD. She is an honorary board member of theNational Organization of Italian American Women who declared Morella aFeminina Excelente.
She officially served as Ambassador from August 1, 2003 to August 6, 2007.[7] In November 2007, she was succeeded by Christopher Egan, son ofRichard Egan.
On August 24, 2020, Morella was one of 24 former Republican lawmakers to endorse Democratic nomineeJoe Biden on the opening day of the Democratic National Convention.[8]
Morella has received honorary doctorates fromAmerican University, 1988;Norwich University, 1989;Dickinson College, 1989; Mt. Vernon College, 1995;University of Maryland University College, 1996;University of Maryland, 1997;Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, 1997;Elizabethtown College, 1999;Washington College, 2000; andNational Labor College, 2004.
Her numerous awards and recognitions include induction into the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame,[9] the Ron Brown Standards Leadership Award, and public service awards from theAmerican Medical Association, theAmerican Bar Association, and the Hubert H. Humphrey Civil Rights Award from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights "for selfless and devoted service in the cause of equality."The Republic of Italy awarded her the Medal of the Legion of Merit. She received the Foremother Award by TheNational Center for Health Research in 2008.[10]
In 2013, she was awarded the Knight Commander's Cross of theOrder of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for putting "energy and enthusiasm into growing the Congressional Study Group on Germany, which is the oldest and most active parliamentary exchange involving Congress and the legislative branch of another country" during her tenure as President of theUnited States Association of Former Members of Congress.[11]
In 2016, she was conferred with Imperial Decorations by the Japanese government. For her contributions to deepen theU.S.-Japan alliance in the U.S. Congress, she was awarded with theOrder of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star.[12]
On April 14, 2018, the Bethesda Library branch of theMontgomery County Public Libraries system was renamed the Connie Morella Library.[13]
| Year | Democrat | Votes | Pct | Republican | Votes | Pct | 3rd Party | Party | Votes | Pct | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1986 | Stewart Bainum, Jr. | 82,825 | 47% | Constance A. Morella | 92,917 | 53% | ||||||||
| 1988 | Peter Franchot | 102,478 | 37% | Constance A. Morella | 172,619 | 63% | ||||||||
| 1990 | James Walker, Jr. | 39,343 | 17% | Constance A. Morella | 180,059 | 79% | Sidney Altman | Independent | 7,485 | 3% | ||||
| 1992 | Edward J. Heffernan | 77,042 | 27% | Constance A. Morella | 203,377 | 73% | ||||||||
| 1994 | Steven Van Grack | 60,660 | 30% | Constance A. Morella | 143,449 | 70% | ||||||||
| 1996 | Donald Mooers | 96,229 | 39% | Constance A. Morella | 152,538 | 61% | * | |||||||
| 1998 | Ralph G. Neas | 87,497 | 40% | Constance A. Morella | 133,145 | 60% | ||||||||
| 2000 | Terry Lierman | 136,840 | 46% | Constance A. Morella | 156,241 | 52% | Brian D. Saunders | Constitution | 7,017 | 2% | * | |||
| 2002 | Chris Van Hollen | 112,788 | 52% | Constance A. Morella | 103,587 | 48% | Stephen Bassett | Unaffiliated | 1,599 | 1% |
*Write-in and minor candidate notes: In 1996, write-ins received 379 votes. In 2000, Lih Young received 77 votes; write-ins received 275 votes; and Scott Walker received 19 votes.
| Maryland House of Delegates | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by John Ward | Member of theMaryland House of Delegates from the 16th district 1979–1987 Served alongside:Marilyn R. Goldwater,Nancy Kopp | Succeeded by Brian Frosh Gilbert Genn |
| U.S. House of Representatives | ||
| Preceded by | Member of theU.S. House of Representatives fromMaryland's 8th congressional district 1987–2003 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Chair of theCongressional Women's Caucus 1995–1997 | Succeeded by |
| Diplomatic posts | ||
| Preceded by | United States Ambassador to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development 2003–2005 | Succeeded by |
| U.S. order of precedence (ceremonial) | ||
| Preceded byas Former US Representative | Order of precedence of the United States as Former US Representative | Succeeded byas Former US Representative |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| People | |
| Other | |
