Elected 1986, seat up 2004 Born: July 20, 1936, Baltimore Home: Baltimore Education: Mt. St. Agnes Col., B.A. 1958, U. of MD, M.S.W. 1965 Religion: Catholic Marital Status: single

Career:

• Political: Baltimore City Cncl., 1971-76; U.S. House of Reps., 1976-86.
• Professional: Social worker, Baltimore Dept. of Social Svcs., 1965-70; Chmn., DNC Delegate Selection Comm., 1972; Adjunct prof., Loyola Col., 1972-76.

DC Office: 709 HSOB 20510, 202-224-4654; Fax: 202-224-8858; Web site: www.senate.gov/~mikulski

State Offices: Annapolis, 410-263-1805; Baltimore,410-962-4510; Greenbelt,301-345-5517; Hagerstown,301-797-2826; Salisbury,410-546-7711.

Committees:

• Democratic Conference Secretary
.
• Appropriations: Commerce, Justice, State & Judiciary; Foreign Operations; Transportation; Treasury & General Government; VA, HUD & Independent Agencies (Chmn.).
• Health, Education, Labor & Pensions: Aging (Chmn.); Public Health.
• Intelligence (Select).

Barbara Mikulski is a senator with deep roots in immigrant, urban America and with a fascination for the new technology and jobs growing in edge cities and beyond, a person who doesn't look anything like a traditional politician but who has become a savvy Senate insider. Her roots are in east Baltimore, where her Polish immigrant parents ran a bakery, and she still lives in the city and commutes to Washington. Mikulski got her start in politics as a social worker, organizing to stop a highway from going through Highlandtown. She won, and in the process was elected to the Baltimore City Council in 1971. She ran for the Senate in 1974, and got a respectable 43% against incumbent Charles Mathias; when Paul Sarbanes ran for the other Senate seat in 1976, Mikulski ran for his 3d District House seat and won. Ten years later, she gave up that seat for what seemed like a chancy Senate race, and won handily, with 50% in the primary to 31% for Montgomery County Congressman Michael Barnes and 14% for Governor Harry Hughes. In the general, she beat, 61%-39%, Linda Chavez, who George W. Bush originally nominated as Labor secretary in 2001.

Mikulski is loud and brash, humorous and warm, brusque and aggressive when she feels it is necessary, curious and thoughtful when encountering another new part of the world. One such world was the Senate. ''The House is a scrappy body, and I was scrappy in the body,'' she explained later. ''I knew the Senate was a different institution. I needed to know the rules.'' In her first term she won a seat on the Appropriations Committee; within two years she was chairman of a subcommittee, handling housing, space and veterans' programs; she was elected Democratic Caucus secretary in 1994. She is also the Senate's chief superintendent of the space program and an enthusiast for space exploration. An ardent backer of the manned space station Freedom (often attacked by other liberals), she has battled to keep it alive despite her sympathy for veterans' and housing programs also funded by her subcommittee, which tend to compete for funds. She has also strongly supported the Hubble space telescope. In February 2000, when the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous went into orbit around an asteroid, she and NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin high-fived each other. It does not hurt that some NASA facilities are in Maryland--the Goddard Space Center in Greenbelt and the Wallops Island flight facility--but she also keeps an eye on others. She has worked to fund Maryland defense spending, including the Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Curtis Bay Coast Guard Yard and an anti-missile jamming system assembled in Linthicum.

On domestic policy, Mikulski is a liberal who insists that ''where there are rights there are responsibilities'' and has criticized fellow Democrats for being ''angst-addicted.'' She supported workfare in the 1980s and voted for the Welfare Reform Act of 1996. She voted for the Defense of Marriage Act. She also worked for the 1997 FDA reform, which updated and streamlined the approval process for drugs and medical devices and encouraged safety and efficacy testing on children. With Charles Grassley she sponsored a 2000 law to extend long-term care insurance for 13 million federal employees, military and their dependents. She sponsored a bill to give patients' rights to longer hospital stays, greater access to specialists and, for women, choice of obstetricians and gynecologists. In January 2000 she sponsored a digital divide bill, to fund e-villages in public housing, expand programs creating community technology centers with Internet access and provide tax incentives to businesses that donate technology or training to schools. She is capable of righteous indignation: During the hearings on Firestone tires in September 2000, she asked executives, "Where was your sense as a human being, as well as a corporation, to say, 'Look out, America, these tires are coming apart'?" She is not afraid to cast lonely votes. She was one of eight senators to vote against financial deregulation in November 1999, one of 19 to vote to cut most of the money for Plan Colombia in June 2000 and one of 15 to vote against Permanent Normal Trade Relations with China in September 2000.

Mikulski is the senior woman in the Senate and convenes meetings of women senators. She has pushed many of what might be called women's issues--mammography clinic standards and homemaker IRAs, retaining a guaranteed benefit with inflation protection in Social Security reform. She was the chief Senate co-sponsor with John Chafee and his son and successor Lincoln Chafee of the 2000 breast cancer bill, providing Medicaid financing of mammograms and Pap tests; but she was denied a White House signing ceremony because the chief House sponsor was Rick Lazio, Hillary Rodham Clinton's opponent in the New York Senate race. She defended Anita Hill, opposed the retirement of a four-star admiral because of the Tailhook scandal, blocked reappointment of the architect of the Capitol, condemned former Oregon Senator Bob Packwood as a member of the Ethics Committee, and journeyed to Aberdeen Proving Grounds--in each case pursuing charges of sexual harassment. But she had little to say about Bill Clinton's treatment of White House intern Monica Lewinsky until in late August 1998, when she called his behavior ''very disappointing'' and his actions ''wrong.''

Mikulski's skills are not just political. She co-authored Capitol Offense and Capitol Virtues with Marylouise Oates, mystery novels describing freshman Senator Eleanor Gorzack of Pennsylvania, who is ''somewhat younger, somewhat slimmer, but no less politically savvy than I am''--and also 5'4'', five inches taller than the 4'11'' Mikulski.

Mikulski's toughest Senate election was her first, which she won fairly easily after strong initial competition. In 1992 and 1998 she was re-elected with 71%, first against Alan Keyes, a former Reagan appointee who has since run for president twice, and then against Ross Pierpont, a genial 81-year-old physician who had run for office and lost 14 times.

Group Ratings
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	CON	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2000	95	71	100	86	79	63	11	46	8	6	15
1999	100	--	100	67	32	--	6	59	4	--	--

National Journal Ratings
	1999 LIB	--	1999 CONS		2000 LIB	--	2000 CONS
Economic	84%	--	13%		84%	--	11%
Social	88%	--	0%		79%	--	0%
Foreign	87%	--	0%		85%	--	14%

Key Votes of the 106th Congress
1. Educ. Savings Accts. N 2. Prescrip. Drug Benefit Y 3. Delay Ergonomic Standards N 4. Phase Out Estate Tax N 5. Review Movie Violence N 6. Gun Show Bckgrnd. Checks Y		7. Ban Part.-Birth Abortion	N
8. Broaden Hate Crimes List	Y
9. NATO War in Serbia	Y
10. Table Cuba Travel Ban	N
11. Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty	Y
12. Perm. Trade with China	N

Election Results
1998 general	Barbara A. Mikulski (D)	1,062,810	(71%)
	Ross Z. Pierpont (R)	444,637	(30%)
1998 primary	Barbara A. Mikulski (D)	349,382	(84%)
	Ann L. Mallory (D)	43,120	(10%)
	Kauko H. Kokkonen (D)	21,658	(5%)
1992 general	Barbara A. Mikulski (D)	1,307,610	(71%)
	Alan L. Keyes (R)	533,688	(29%)

Campaign Finance
1998	Receipts	Receipts from PACs	Expenditures
Barbara A. Mikulski (D)	$2,908,352	$925,021	$3,014,312
Ross Z. Pierpont (R)	$297,770		$297,768