Sen. Olympia Snowe (R) Elected 1994, 2d term up 2006
Born:	Feb. 21, 1947, Augusta
Home:	Auburn
Education:	U. of ME, B.A. 1969
Religion:	Greek Orthodox
Marital Status:	married (John McKernan)
Elected  Office:	ME House of Reps., 1973-76; ME Senate, 1976-78; U.S. House of Reps., 1978-94.
Professional Career:	Dir., Superior Concrete Co., 1969-78; Auburn Bd. of Voter Registration, 1971-73.
DC Office	154 RSOB20510, 202-224-5344; Fax: 202-224-1946; Web site: snowe.senate.gov
State Offices	Auburn, 207-786-2451; Augusta, 207-622-8292; Bangor, 207-945-0432; Biddeford, 207-282-4144; Portland, 207-874-0833; Presque Isle, 207-764-5124.
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Olympia Snowe, Maine's senior senator, is a Republican first elected to the House in 1978 and to the Senate in 1994. Snowe grew up in Auburn and worked as a legislative staffer after college; in 1973, after her husband, state Representative Peter Snowe, died in an auto accident, she was elected to his seat. In 1978, when Congressman William Cohen ran for the Senate, she ran for the House in the northern 2d District, and won handily. She had a moderate record and won by large margins in the 1980s but more narrowly in the 1990s; in 1989 she married Governor John McKernan, her former House colleague. When Senator George Mitchell announced his retirement in March 1994, Snowe decided instantly to run. Immediately she went on the attack against her obvious Democratic opponent, 1st District Congressman Tom Andrews, whose winning margin two years before had been 107,000 votes, while hers was only 22,000. Snowe attacked him hard for voting for the bill that closed Loring Air Force Base in northern Maine and for opposing the balanced budget amendment. She won 60%-36%.

In the Senate, she was the least conservative of the 11 freshman Republicans elected in 1994. Her voting record has been around the middle of the Senate; she has voted with Democrats on some economic and many cultural issues and has been more conservative on defense and foreign policy. She sees herself as a centrist; in 2004 she said, looking ahead, "Maybe we can help to lessen the polarization, the partisanship. Obviously, the center is dwindling, and I think that's regrettable. … We [shouldn't] just drive ideological wedges, but rather [see] how can we fashion the very best policy in the interests of the country."

In early 2001, with the Senate equally divided, Snowe played a pivotal role on some issues. She insisted successfully on limiting the size of the Bush tax cut. In May 2001 she led a group of Finance Committee members who insisted that the child care tax credit would be refundable, so that money would go to those with low incomes who pay no income tax. Many Republicans opposed this as a form of welfare; Snowe argued that these people needed tax relief. The provision went into the Senate bill and while the conference committee was pending Snowe sponsored a nonbinding resolution insisting on it that passed 94-4: so the refundable credit became law. She was one of two Republicans voting with Democrats in July 2001 for a $7.5 billion farm aid bill; that was stopped by George W. Bush's veto threat. She and Collins voted for the 2002 farm bill after insertion of the $2 billion dairy program. In November 2002, the pair threatened to vote against the homeland security bill because of provisions, added quietly in the House, limiting liability of vaccine makers for additives, permitting overseas companies to compete for contracts and targeting one project to Texas A&M University. Telephone lines buzzed with negotiations; Speaker Dennis Hastert was tracked down in Istanbul. Snowe and Collins agreed to vote for the bill after Majority Leader Trent Lott gave them a commitment that the three provisions would be revisited early in 2003; in January 2003, the new Majority Leader Bill Frist, honored that commitment.

In the 2004 budget negotiations Snowe played a key role. She insisted on applying the pay-as-you-go rule to tax cuts as well as to spending increases; with John McCain and Lincoln Chafee taking the same stand, it was made part of the Senate budget resolution. House Republicans would not accept that, and so there was no binding budget resolution that year. From her seat on the Finance Committee, Snowe inserted into the corporate tax bill provisions for tax deferral for military shipbuilding yards (Bath Iron Works is Maine's largest employer), income averaging for fishermen, favorable accounting provisions for reforestation and favorable treatment for energy plants that burn wood chips. On prescription drugs, she was one of the sponsors of the Tripartisan plan, developed in the Finance Committee in 2001 and which became the chief alternative to the Democrats' plan in summer 2002. She favors reimportation of prescription drugs and sponsored a bill in May 2004 to regulate wholesalers who reimport drugs and to forbid pharmaceutical companies from refusing to sell to Canadian companies that export drugs to the U.S.; it was considered more favorable to reimportation than a competing measure sponsored by her Maine colleague Susan Collins. With Collins, she sponsored a bill for $6 billion for child care and training for long-term employment for TANF recipients. With Hillary Rodham Clinton she sponsored a bill to provide kinship navigator programs and foster care funding for grandparents and other relatives taking care of children. Snowe has taken a lead role on many women's health care issues--more money for women's health research, more screening for osteoporosis, gender analysis in FDA clinical trials. She supports abortion rights and came out against George W. Bush's reinstatement of the Mexico City policy in 2001.

In January 2003 Snowe became chairman of the Small Business Committee and promised to work for more affordable health insurance, regulatory relief and access to foreign markets. She has called for less bundling of federal contracts so that small businesses can bid more easily for them. She has sponsored legislation to make Association Health Plans more attractive to small businesses and to raise from $5 million to $10 million the threshold above which businesses have to use accrual accounting. She and John Kerry successfully sponsored the reinstatement of the Women's Business Center Sustainability program at SBA. In reauthorizing the SBA in 2004, Snowe opposed removing the subsidy from 7(a) programs, which were suspended briefly for want of funding in January 2004. But under pressure from the Bush administration, she and House Chairman Don Manzullo agreed to an end to the subsidy and higher fees, in return for increases in the loan guarantee and maximum loan amount.

On the Finance Committee, Snowe joined Democrats in voting against the Australia Free Trade Agreement; she was opposed because it would increase dairy imports. She worked to extend the Milk Income Loss Compensation program. As chairman of the Oceans Subcommittee, she worked to reauthorize a lapsed 1996 fisheries law, but sought to drop the 10-year time frame for rebuilding fish stocks in return for limiting the catch on each stock according to scientific estimates. She opposed making fish quotas tradable. She urged the Bush administration to act on the September 2004 recommendations of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, including a $4 billion trust fund for ocean initiatives funded by offshore oil and gas royalties. She worked for a compromise change in accounting methods to keep E-rate revenues going to connecting schools and libraries to the Internet. With other members of the Maine delegation, she worked to save the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard from closure in the 2005 base-closing round; she and Trent Lott unsuccessfully tried to postpone the round by two years. When the Pentagon's recommendations were released in May 2005, Maine faced close to a worst case scenario: the shipyard was slated for closure and Brunswick Naval Air Station was to have all of its aircraft and half its military personnel eliminated.

Snowe has enjoyed very high job ratings in Maine. She was reelected 69%-31% in 2000 and in early 2005 seemed unlikely to face strong opposition in 2006, but the latest round of base closing may complicate her reelection effort.

Committees

• Commerce, Science & Transportation: Aviation; Fisheries & the Coast Guard (Chmn.); Global Climate Change & Impacts; National Ocean Policy Study; Surface Transportation & Merchant Marine.
• Finance: Health Care; International Trade; Taxation & IRS Oversight.
• Intelligence (Select).
• Small Business & Entrepreneurship (Chmn.).

Group Ratings (More Info)
	ADA	ACLU	AFS	LCV	ITIC	NTU	COC	ACU	NTLC	CHC
2004	65	56	57	50	92	51	71	60	73	50	--
2003	55	--	44	74	--	52	65	35	--	--	--

National Journal Ratings (More Info)
	2003 LIB	--	2003 CONS		2004 LIB	--	2004 CONS
Economic	49%	--	50%		48%	--	51%
Social	51%	--	46%		51%	--	48%
Foreign	48%	--	49%		52%	--	47%
For National Journal's complete 2004 Vote Ratings, as well as previous ratings dating back to 1995, please click here.

Key Votes Of The 108th Congress (More Info)
1. Ban Drilling in ANWR Y 2. Approve Bush Tax Cuts N 3. Medicare/Rx Bill Y 4. Bar Overtime Pay Regs. Y 5. Energy Bill N 6. Support Roe v. Wade Y		7. Ban Partial-Birth Abortion N  8. Assault Weapons Ban Y  9. Ban Same-Sex Marriage N 10. Ban Bunker-Buster Bomb N 11. Fund Iraq War Y 12. Restrict Missile Defense Y

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2000 general	Olympia Snowe (R)	437,689	69%	$1,981,504
	Mark Lawrence (D)	197,183	31%	$727,655
2000 primary	Olympia Snowe (R)	unopposed
1994 general	Olympia Snowe (R)	308,244	60%	$2,041,834
	Tom Andrews (D)	186,042	36%	$1,482,060
	Other	17,447	3%
Prior winning percentages: 1992 House (49%); 1990 House (51%); 1988 House (66%); 1986 House (77%); 1984 House (76%); 1982 House (67%); 1980 House (79%); 1978 House (51%)