In November 2000, Olympia J. Snowe was re-elected to a second six-year term with 69 percent of the vote to continue representing Maine in the United States Senate. With her election in 1994, she became only the second woman Senator in history to represent Maine, following the late Sen. Margaret Chase Smith, 

who served from 1949 - 1973. 

Timeline

1947 - Born on February 21, in Augusta, Maine.

1973 - Elected to the Maine House seat left vacant by the death of her first husband, the late Peter Snowe .

1974 - Re-elected to the Maine House.

1976 - Elected to the Maine Senate.

1978 - Elected to Congress as the youngest Republican woman, and the first Greek-American woman, ever elected to Congress.

1994 - Elected to the U.S. Senate, becoming the first woman in American history to serve in both houses of a state legislature and both houses of Congress.

1997 - Appointed to the position of Counsel to the Assistant Majority Leader.

2001 - Becomes the first Republican woman ever to secure a full-term seat on the Senate Finance Committee

Before her election to the Senate, Olympia Snowe represented Maine’s Second Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives for sixteen years. Senator Snowe is only the fourth woman in history to be elected to both houses of Congress and the first woman in American history to serve in both houses of a state legislature and both houses of Congress. When first elected to Congress in 1978, at the age of 31, Olympia Snowe was the youngest Republican woman, and the first Greek-American woman, ever elected to Congress. She has won more federal elections in Maine than any other person since World War II.

In the Senate, Olympia Snowe has carved      out a reputation as a leading moderate, focusing her attention on efforts to build bipartisan consensus on key issues. In 1999, she was cited by Congressional Quarterly for her centrist leadership, and is co-chair with Senator Joe Lieberman (D-Connecticut) of the Senate Centrist Coalition, a vehicle for communication and cooperation between Senate Democrats and Republicans.

In her first term, she was appointed to leadership as a Deputy Whip and in 1997 was elevated to the position of Counsel to the Assistant Majority Leader.

Senator Snowe has worked extensively on a number of issues, such as: budget and fiscal responsibility; education, including student financial aid and education technology; national security; women’s issues; health care, including prescription drug coverage for Medicare recipients; oceans and fisheries issues; and campaign finance reform. She has also led efforts important to Maine, including a successful push for federal disaster funds in response to a devastating 1998 ice storm, increased funding for the Togus veterans hospital, reauthorization of the Northeast Dairy Compact so critical to the survival of Maine’s small family dairy farms, and opposition to a proposed federal rule that would have devastated the state’s lobster fishery.

In 2001, Snowe became the first Republican woman ever to secure a full-term seat on the Senate Finance Committee, and only the third woman in history to join the panel. The Committee is considered one of the most powerful in Congress because its members write tax, trade, health care, welfare, Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security-related legislation. Snowe is a member on the Subcommittee on Health Care, which oversees matters related to health insurance, Medicare and the uninsured.

A member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, she is the Chair of its Subcommittee on Fisheries and Coast Guard, which oversees America’s fisheries and the Coast Guard. A former member of the Senate Budget Committee, she was a key voice in establishing education as a priority within the context of the first balanced budget since 1969, and in 1999, 2000, and 2001 authored the amendment that for the first time created a reserve fund for a Medicare prescription drug benefit. She currently sits on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and is also Chair of the Senate Small Business Committee.

Prior to her service on the Finance Committee, Senator Snowe had been the fourth woman ever to serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee, where she was the first woman Senator to chair the Subcommittee on Seapower, which oversees the Navy and Marine Corps. Snowe is a leading voice in the Senate on issues related to women in the military and shipbuilding matters.

During the Senate impeachment trial of the President Clinton in 1999, Senator Snowe’s efforts precipitated an historic bipartisan caucus meeting of the Senate to establish procedures for consideration of the Articles of Impeachment that helped build public confidence in the Senate’s deliberations.

During her tenure in the U.S. House of Representatives, she co-chaired the Congressional Caucus on Women’s issues for ten years, and provided leadership in establishing the Office of Women’s Health at the National Institutes of Health. She also served as a member of the House Budget Committee; of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where she was Ranking Republican on the Subcommittee on International Operations; and of the former House Select Committee on Aging, where she was Ranking Republican on the Subcommittee on Human Services.

She served in both Houses of the Maine Legislature, first elected to the Maine House - representing her home town of Auburn - in 1973 to the seat left vacant by the death of her first husband, the late Peter Snowe, in an auto accident. She was re-elected in 1974, and was elected to the Maine Senate representing Androscoggin County  in 1976.

Formerly Olympia Jean Bouchles, she was born on February 21, 1947, in Augusta, Maine. She is the daughter of the late George Bouchles, a native of Mytilene, Greece, and the late Georgia Goranites Bouchles, whose parents emigrated to America from Sparta. After the death of her parents, she was raised by her aunt and uncle, Mary and the late James Goranites of Auburn, Maine.

She attended St. Basil’s Academy, a Greek Orthodox school in Garrison, New York, and graduated from Edward Little High School in Auburn. She earned a degree in political science from the University of Maine in 1969.

Senator Snowe is married to former Maine Governor John R. McKernan Jr. She is a member of the Holy Trinity Greek Orthodox Church in Lewiston, Maine.