Claire McCaskill

Claire Conner McCaskill (born July 24, 1953) is the senior United States Senator from Missouri and a member of the Democratic Party. She defeated Republican incumbent Jim Talent in the 2006 United States Senate election, by a margin of 49.6% to 47.3%. She is the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Missouri in her own right. She became the state's senior U.S. Senator upon the retirement of Kit Bond in 2011 and won a bid for re-election in 2012, where she defeated Republican Todd Akin by a margin of 54.7% to 39.2%.

Before her election to the U.S. Senate, McCaskill was State Auditor of Missouri from 1999 to 2007. She previously served as Jackson County Prosecutor (1993–1998) and a member of the Missouri House of Representatives (1983–1989). She was an unsuccessful candidate for Governor of Missouri in the 2004 gubernatorial election. She is a native of Rolla and graduate of the University of Missouri.

In the U.S. Senate, McCaskill serves as a member of the Committee on Armed Services, Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, and Special Committee on Aging. She is chairperson of the Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight.

Early life, education, and early law career
McCaskill was born in Rolla, Missouri. McCaskill's father, William Young McCaskill (1925-1993), served as a state Insurance Commissioner during the administration of Governor Warren E. Hearnes. Her mother, Betty Anne (née Ward; 1928-2012), was the first woman elected to the City Council of Columbia, Missouri. Betty Anne McCaskill lost a race for a seat in the state House of Representatives to Leroy Blunt, former Governor Matt Blunt's grandfather.

McCaskill spent her early childhood in the small Missouri town of Houston, later moving to Lebanon, and eventually Columbia. McCaskill attended David H. Hickman High School in Columbia, where she was a cheerleader, Pep Club president, a member of the debate club, performed in school musicals, and was elected homecoming queen. While attending the University of Missouri, McCaskill joined Kappa Alpha Theta sorority, graduating in 1975 with a B.A. in political science. She received her Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Missouri School of Law in 1978.

Except for three years spent in private practice as an attorney at the firm of a Kansas City trial lawyer (1989 to 1991), McCaskill has worked in the public sector continuously since graduating from law school in 1978. McCaskill, following her graduation from law school, spent one year as a law clerk on the Missouri Court of Appeals for the Western District, which sits in Kansas City. Thereafter, McCaskill joined the Jackson County prosecutor's office where she specialized in arson cases.

State legislature
In 1982, McCaskill was elected to represent the Brookside neighborhood of Kansas City in the Missouri House of Representatives. McCaskill left the state House to contemplate running for Jackson County Prosecutor in 1988, but did not pursue the position when fellow Democrat and incumbent Prosecutor Albert Riederer decided to seek another term.

County politics
In 1990, McCaskill was elected to the Jackson County Legislature (the equivalent of a county commission or county council). In 1991, McCaskill made a bold announcement when she expressed her intention to run for County Prosecutor. The announcement was significant in that the elected Democratic Prosecutor Riederer had not announced that he wasn't going to seek re-election. McCaskill then went on to victory in capturing the Jackson County Prosecutor's Office in 1992.

McCaskill was the first woman to serve as Jackson County Prosecutor, and was re-elected to that office in 1996.

State Auditor
In 1998 McCaskill was elected to the position of State Auditor, and was the second woman State Auditor after her predecessor, Margaret B. Kelly.

2004 gubernatorial campaign
On August 3, 2004, McCaskill defeated Governor Bob Holden in the Democratic primary race, becoming the first person to defeat an incumbent governor in a primary election in state history. Despite McCaskill's victory, however, she was criticized by some Democrats for accepting campaign contributions from Anheuser–Busch, who had pulled their support for Holden after he vetoed a concealed weapons bill passed by the state legislature.

On November 2, 2004, McCaskill lost to then-Secretary of State Matt Blunt in the general election by a margin of 51% to 48%. McCaskill's loss to Blunt was the first defeat in her 20-year political career.

Elections

 * 2006

Both Talent and McCaskill easily defeated their opponents in their respective primaries on August 8, 2006. McCaskill and Talent debated each other on Meet the Press on October 8, 2006. On November 8, 2006, McCaskill defeated Talent by a margin of 49.6% to 47.3% with two minor-party candidates taking the remainder.


 * 2012

McCaskill defeated Republican nominee Todd Akin and Libertarian Party nominee Jonathan Dine in the 2012 election.

Tenure
McCaskill is the first elected woman to represent Missouri in the U.S. Senate. Jean Carnahan was appointed to the Senate following her husband's death and posthumous election, but was defeated in a close election by Jim Talent. McCaskill entered the U.S. Senate promising to raise the minimum wage and to work with her counterpart from Missouri, Republican Senator Kit Bond.

In January 2008, Claire McCaskill decided to endorse Senator Barack Obama in his campaign for the Democratic nomination for the presidential elections of 2008, making her one of the first senators to do so. She has been one of the most visible faces for his campaign. McCaskill's support was crucial to Obama's narrow victory in the Missouri primary in February 2008. She has credited her daughter as the one who made her publicly endorse Obama. She had been frequently mentioned as a possible vice presidential choice of Senator Obama in the 2008 run for the White House, but was never seriously considered. She spoke on the opening day of the Democratic National Convention in August 2008.

Armed services
She introduced legislation with then-Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) after the Walter Reed Army Medical Center neglect scandal erupted which demanded the full accountability of wounded veterans and agencies that would ensure physical and mental health conditions being addressed. "Those who have fought this war and felt its effects most personally, our servicemen and women, deserve to have a real researched plan for dealing with the aftermath of their sacrifice, so that the mistakes made by the administration in war planning are not repeated in planning for the readjustment needs of these heroes," McCaskill noted on the Senate floor after Obama made comments about the same issue. McCaskill also took Secretary of Veterans Affairs Jim Nicholson to task over the "irresponsibility" regarding overlooking the Department of Veterans Affairs.

In the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCaskill has made herself known for being aggressive by questioning officials in the Department of Defense and their "loose" spending habits. McCaskill grilled top officials of the military's auditing agencies for rewarding KBR for their Logistics Civil Augmentation Program (LOGCAP) contract, a contract now valued at over $20 billion, despite audit reports indicating extreme contractor mismanagement and expansive overcharging of the U.S. government. She has also been critical of DoD's auditors, the Defense Contract Audit Agency, based on a recent GAO report which alleges that audits were not properly supported or supervised, and in some cases been changed by managers in order to appease the procurement community and/or the audited contractor.

On December 18, 2010, McCaskill voted in favor of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Repeal Act of 2010.

Disaster recovery
As a member of the Senate ad hoc subcommittee on disaster recovery, McCaskill supported Republican U.S. Representative Anh Joseph Cao and Democratic fellow U.S. Senator Mary Landrieu in their insistence on corrections of mismanagement of the New Orleans office of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

Health care
McCaskill voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as ObamaCare, in December 2009, and she voted for the Health Care and Education Reconciliation Act of 2010. She was critical of the Stupak–Pitts Amendment, which would have placed limits on private funding of abortions in the context of the November 2009 Affordable Health Care for America Act.

Airplane reimbursement and property tax scandal
On March 16, 2011, McCaskill told reporters that she was "embarrassed" about revelations that her office had used taxpayer money for the senator's use of a private airplane she co-owned with her husband and friends. According to a government audit, the plane was used for 90 flights taken between Washington D.C. and her home in suburban St. Louis, as well as to numerous sites around the state of Missouri. According to McCaskill's Senate office, all but 1 of the 90 flights in question were within Senate rules. As soon as the story broke, Senator McCaskill sent a check for $88,000 to the U.S. Treasury as reimbursement for the flights. The Missouri Republican Party filed a formal complaint with the Senate Ethics Committee on March 16. In response McCaskill said, “The Missouri Republican Party is going to try to ride this horse as long as they can. They’re going to try to make this as big a deal as they can. Them filing the ethics complaint is about as surprising as the sun coming up.” On March 21, 2011 Politico reported that McCaskill had failed to pay more than $280,000 in property taxes on the plane and was planning to sell it. “I have convinced my husband to sell the damn plane,” McCaskill said on a conference call with reporters. “I will never set foot on the plane again.” The Senate Ethics Committee has yet to comment on the matter.

The plane, a 2001 Pilatus PC-12, is stored at Spirit of St. Louis Airport, McCaskill confirmed. It is owned by Timesaver LLC, a Delaware-based corporation. McCaskill noted that she had paid $38,800 in sales taxes on the plane, and she only recently became aware that Missouri also imposed a property tax on private aircraft. She said she was “disappointed” in herself for not ensuring that Timesaver LLC paid the property taxes. “Frankly, having the plane owned in Delaware would not negate the necessity of paying the personal property tax in Missouri” she said. “This is a mistake. It should have been reported in Missouri. It was owed in Missouri. It will be paid in Missouri today.”

Committee assignments
Senator McCaskill also served as the Chairwoman of the Select Committee for the Impeachment of Samuel B. Kent, which was disbanded July 22, 2009, after Judge Kent resigned.
 * Committee on Armed Services
 * Subcommittee on Airland
 * Subcommittee on Personnel
 * Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support
 * Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation
 * Subcommittee on Aviation Operations, Safety, and Security
 * Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs, Insurance, and Automotive Safety
 * Subcommittee on Interstate Commerce, Trade, and Tourism
 * Subcommittee on Science, Technology, and Innovation
 * Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs
 * Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security
 * Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations
 * Ad Hoc Subcommittee on State, Local, and Private Sector Preparedness and Integration
 * Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight (Chairwoman)
 * Special Committee on Aging
 * Impeachment Trial Committee on the Articles against Judge G. Thomas Porteous, Jr. (Chairwoman)

Personal life
McCaskill was married to David Exposito, with whom she had three children. The couple divorced in 1995, after 11 years of marriage, while McCaskill was Jackson County Prosecutor. David Exposito was found murdered in Kansas City, Kansas on December 12, 2005.

On the October 3, 2009 episode of NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!, McCaskill spoke about a vacation early in her career as a lawyer, where she was a contestant on High Rollers. McCaskill would reign as champion for four days, and later sold several of her prizes to pay off her student loan debt.

In April 2002, McCaskill married St. Louis businessman Joseph Shepard. Shepard lent $1.6 million to McCaskill's 2004 gubernatorial campaign and also had business interests in the nursing home industry. Because as state auditor McCaskill was responsible for auditing the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services, which regulates the state's nursing home system, Shepard's financial interests in the industry became an issue during the 2004 gubernatorial campaign.

McCaskill's mother, Betty Anne McCaskill, passed away on October 29, 2012 from natural causes at the age of 84.

McCaskill is a convert to Roman Catholicism.

= Resources =