Elected 2000, seat up 2006 Born: Oct., 13, 1958, Indianapolis, IN Home: Edmonds Education: Miami U. (OH), B.A. 1981 Religion: Catholic Marital Status: single

Career:

• Political: WA House of Reps., 1987-92; U.S. House of Reps., 1992-94.
• Professional: Real Networks, 1995-2000.

DC Office: 717 HSOB 20510, 202-224-3441; Fax: 202-228-0514; Web site: cantwell.senate.gov

State Offices: Seattle, 206-220-6400; Spokane,509-353-2507.

Committees:

• Energy & Natural Resources: Energy; Public Lands & Forests; Water & Power.
• Indian Affairs.
• Judiciary: Antitrust, Business Rights & Competition; Crime & Drugs; Immigration; Technology, Terrorism & Government Information.
• Small Business.

Maria Cantwell is a Democrat elected in the closest Senate race of 2000. Cantwell grew up in Indianapolis, where her father, a construction worker, served as county commissioner, city councilman and state legislator. She graduated from Miami University (Ohio) in 1980--the first in her family to graduate from college--and worked in Ohio for Jerry Springer's 1982 campaign for governor. Then she worked for Senator Alan Cranston's presidential campaign and went to Seattle to set up a regional campaign office. The Cranston campaign went nowhere, and so did Cantwell: she loved the Pacific Northwest and decided to stay. She moved to Mountlake Terrace, a suburb in Snohomish County just north of Seattle, where she organized a coalition to build a new library. In 1986, at 28, she was elected to the Washington House, where she managed the 1990 Growth Management Act during a 65-day session.

In 1992 Cantwell ran for the House, for the just redrawn 1st District seat being vacated by Republican John Miller. It included suburbs north and east of Seattle, including Redmond, the home of Microsoft, and it went across Puget Sound to include the semi-rural northern half of Kitsap County, just north of the Navy base town of Bremerton. She won a solid 55%-42% victory. In the House she supported the family and medical leave bill and the Clinton economic plan; she did not support the Clinton health care plan and only supported NAFTA at the last minute. She was a strong supporter of abortion rights and of stands backed by environmental advocacy groups. She worked to convince the Clinton administration to abandon its support of the "clipper chip": which would have enabled government to monitor personal electronic communications. But by fall 1994 some of those positions had become unpopular. In the September 1994 all-party primary she got just 44% of the vote, compared to 52% for three Republican candidates. In November she lost 52%-48% to Republican nominee Rick White.

Back in the Seattle area, she joined a startup firm called Progressive Networks in 1995; five years later it had become RealNetworks, a leader in Internet-based audio and visual software. In late 1999 her stock was worth about $40 million, and she decided to run against Republican Senator Slade Gorton. A brainy and hard-working veteran of Washington politics, Gorton served as attorney general from 1968 to 1980 and was elected Senator in 1980, 1988 and 1994 (he lost a race in 1986). Gorton had an increasingly conservative record on environmental and economic issues; he was also Microsoft's leading advocate on Capitol Hill. Cantwell was an answer to Democrats' prayers; their well-known House members had declined to run, and Insurance Commissioner Deborah Senn, who was running, was widely considered too liberal to win. Senn delivered revival-like speeches on the campaign trail, bringing out patients she had assisted against insurance companies. They had similar positions on many issues--both opposed breaching the Snake River dams--but Cantwell was for and Senn against permanent normal trade relations with China. They had different role models: Cantwell called herself a New Democrat in the Clinton mode, while Senn said her role model was Senator Barbara Mikulski. But the real difference was money. Cantwell, who liquidated more than $5 million of her RealNetworks stock, spent freely, while Senn was on TV only during the last two weeks before the September all-party primary. Cantwell won 37% of the total vote, to only 13% for Senn; Gorton, with 44% of the vote, was ahead but short of a majority.

For the general Cantwell said she would spend "whatever it takes" to win. At the same time, she made her support of McCain-Feingold-type campaign finance regulation a major issue, and refused to take contributions from PACs or soft money from the Democratic Party (though it put $640,000 into the state before Cantwell won the primary). She charged that Gorton was beholden to special interest contributors, singling out his last-night amendment to open a cyanide-leach gold mine in Okanogan County. Gorton called Cantwell an old-style liberal Democrat who would have government meddling in health care, education and local environmental issues. He emphasized his support of block grants to school districts and his bill to prohibit pharmaceutical companies from selling prescription drugs for lower prices in foreign countries than they do in the United States. Cantwell highlighted her experience in the high-tech private sector. "I've just spent the past five years in the private sector learning how to do things on the outside," she said. "Senator Gorton's been in office for 41 years. He seems to like government a lot." She called Gorton divisive, saying he pit eastern Washington against Seattle on environmental and other issues. Overall, Cantwell spent $11.5 million, $10.3 million of which she contributed; Gorton spent $6.4 million. Gorton was also hurt by more than $500,000 spent by Indian tribes, many flush with casino cash, who resented his efforts to have Indians bound by the laws which bind other people. And he was undoubtedly hurt by the fact that the Washington Republican Party after the election had $1.5 million cash left over; the state chairman, later deposed, had even spent $360,000 in cash for an office building.

Gorton led on election night, but not by much. Washington allows absentee voting, and 54% of the votes were cast absentee; two days after the election, one-quarter of the votes had yet to be counted. During the three weeks of counting, Gorton seemed to have the advantage. But the last two day's absentee ballots from King County put Cantwell over the top by 1,953. A mandated recount left the margin at 2,229 for Cantwell, out of 2.4 million cast. Cantwell carried only five counties--King, Snohomish, Thurston (which includes the state capital of Olympia) and two small counties in the west. She won King County 59%-39%; six years earlier Gorton had lost it by only 52%-48%. She also carried the rest of western Washington 50%-47%. Gorton carried eastern Washington 61%-36%--not quite enough to win. Cantwell's victory created a tie in the Senate, until James Jeffords became an independent in May 2001 and gave Democrats a razor-thin majority. This race was a very big loss for the Republican Party.

In the Senate Cantwell seems likely to be an advocate of high-tech industries; although Microsoft strongly backed Gorton, its president Steve Ballmer called her shortly after it was clear she had won. As she promised, she worked hard on campaign finance in the March 2001 two-week session on the issue. But she also had her own campaign finance problem. RealNetworks, like so many high-tech firms, saw its stock price plummet from $80 in spring 2000 to $6 in spring 2001. Cantwell had sold $5.6 million of her stock to finance her campaign, and borrowed another $3.8 million from a bank with RealNetworks stock as collateral. Suddenly she owed far more than the collateral was worth. She negotiated another loan due December 2001, guaranteed by the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, which of course could use soft money to pay it off. And she began raising money, from committed Democrats and from some of those she might have called special interests during the campaign. But Cantwell had never shown much interest in an affluent lifestyle, and she proved the old rule that the smart thing to do with bubble money is to use it to buy something you want.

Election Results
2000 general	Maria Cantwell (D)	1,199,437	(49%)
	Slade Gorton (R)	1,197,208	(49%)
	Others	64,734	(3%)
2000 primary	Slade Gorton (R)	560,787	(44%)
	Maria Cantwell (D)	472,609	(37%)
	Deborah Senn (D)	168,110	(13%)
	Others	85,732	(7%)
1994 general	Slade Gorton (R)	947,821	(56%)
	Ron Sims (D)	752,352	(44%)

Campaign Finance
2000	Receipts	Receipts from PACs	Expenditures
Maria Cantwell (D)	$7,774,040		$11,533,295
Slade Gorton (R)	$6,384,256	$1,770,339	$6,402,488