Inspired by compelling women role models, who “believed
very strongly in giving back, whether it was to their
community or to their church, and particularly to their
family,” Blanche Lambert Lincoln pursued a life in public
service. With the support of her parents, she achieved
success in public life that many did not predict. “When
I came home and decided to run for Congress,” Lincoln
recalled later, “[my father] said, ‘Well, we’ve tried to teach
you all to reach for the stars and believe in yourself and
go for it.’ He said, ‘We might have done too good a job
on you.’”1
At age 38, having served two terms in the U.S.
House, she became the youngest woman ever elected to
serve in the U.S. Senate, working to balance her professional
and personal responsibilities and always stressing the
importance of her role as mother to two small children.
During her tenure in Congress, Lincoln was a proponent
for farmers and working and rural families, and in 2009, she
became the first woman to chair the Senate Committee on
Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry.2
The youngest of four children, Blanche M. Lambert
was born in Helena, Arkansas, on September 30, 1960,
to Jordan Jr. and Martha Kelly Lambert. The Lamberts
were sixth-generation farmers of cotton, rice, wheat, and soybeans. After attending public school, Lambert graduated
with a BS in biology from Randolph-Macon Women’s
College, in Lynchburg, Virginia, in 1982. In 1983 Lambert
went to Washington, DC, where she worked as a staff
assistant for Arkansas Democratic Congressman William
Vollie (Bill) Alexander Jr. That experience cemented her
lifelong appreciation for the responsibilities and challenges
of governing.3 From 1985 until 1991, she worked for
lobbying firms as a researcher.
In 1992 Lambert decided to challenge her old boss,
Representative Alexander, for the Democratic nomination
in his rural northeast Arkansas district, which included
farmland along the Mississippi River as well as the city of
Jonesboro.4 To prepare for the campaign, Lincoln attended
a seminar organized by the National Women’s Political
Caucus. She called it a “truth-telling” experience, where the
challenges for women running for public office were bluntly
stated. I was advised, “Remember, always, always, have a
stick of lipstick in your pocket. Always carry an extra pair of
panty hose. Always carry a fresh shirt. Because the standard
is higher for you.”5 She ran on a lean budget, traveling the
sprawling district in a pick-up truck and using connections
to local chapters of Business and Professional Women as a campaign base.6
Lambert prevailed in the primary with 61
percent of the vote, carrying all but two of the district’s 25
counties. In the general election, she defeated a Republican
real estate developer with 70 percent of the vote.7 In 1993
Blanche Lambert married Steve Lincoln, a pediatrician. In
1994 she was re-elected to a second term.
When Lincoln joined the 103rd Congress (1993–1995),
she secured a seat on the influential Energy and Commerce
Committee over the preference of the committee chairman,
whom she soon impressed.8
She also was assigned to the
Agriculture Committee and was appointed to the coveted
Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, the party
leadership organization that makes committee assignments.
She advocated for affordable health care coverage for
farmers and the self-employed. On fiscal matters she was
more conservative, voting for the Penny–Kasich plan to
cut federal spending and, in her second term, approving a
balanced budget constitutional amendment. Lincoln also
voted for the North American Free Trade Agreement in
1993 and the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs in
1994. In January 1996, she announced her decision not to
seek re-election in the House after learning she was pregnant
with twins.9
After twin boys Reece and Bennett were born
that summer, Lincoln served out the remainder of her term
and returned to Arkansas.
When incumbent Senator Dale Bumpers announced
his retirement in 1998, Lincoln jumped into the race,
winning the Democratic nomination in a four-way primary
to succeed him.10 Her general election opponent was a
conservative from the Arkansas state senate who supported
tax reform and opposed abortion rights. Reflecting on
her races for the House and later for the Senate, Lincoln
recalled, “my age was a bigger issue than my gender.”
Lincoln, who supported women’s reproductive choice,
ran on her credentials as a mother and pledged to support
women’s and children’s health issues in the Senate.11 She
prevailed with 55 percent of the vote. In 2004 Lincoln was
re-elected with 56 percent of the vote over a Republican
state senator.12 Her three committee assignments in the
106th Congress (1999–2001) included Energy and Natural
Resources; Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry; and the
Special Committee on Aging. In 2000 she co-authored
Nine and Counting, a book by and about the women of the
Senate. In the 107th Congress (2001–2003), she left Energy
and Natural Resources to join the Finance Committee (she
was only the third woman to serve in that panel’s history) and the Select Committee on Ethics. Her committee work
helped Lincoln to overcome earlier concerns about her
inexperience. “I think I felt like I had at least proved some
things . . . I worked hard on things that were important
to Arkansas.”13
As a cofounder of the Senate New Democrat Coalition,
Lincoln maintained her profile as a moderate willing to
work with Republicans, voting for the 2001 tax cut but
against other policy proposals put forward by the George W.
Bush administration, such as drilling for oil on Alaska’s
North Slope.14 Lincoln worked closely with other senators,
including Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine, to represent
the interests and needs of rural Americans. She focused on
agricultural issues affecting Arkansas farmers, sponsoring
legislation related to flooding and crop insurance. In the
106th Congress, she joined the World Trade Organization
Caucus and tried to open Cuban markets to Arkansas rice
farmers. In the 107th Congress, she wrote a bill providing
for tax credits to spur the development of biodiesel
fuel made from soybeans. In December 2000, Lincoln
successfully shepherded through the Senate a bill to establish
the Delta Regional Authority, a centralized agency to foster
economic development in the lower Mississippi Delta
region.15 During the 109th Congress (2005–2007), Lincoln
continued to advocate for the development of alternative
energy sources. Consistently, throughout her two terms
in the U.S. Senate, Lincoln served as a voice for working
parents, and especially women. When debating issues such
as welfare reform, child tax credits, child care availability, or
other proposals that would directly impact working parents,
Lincoln served as their advocate. “There are very few people
in the United States Senate who know and understand what
working moms are going through,” she recalled in a 2017
interview. “I think working moms need to be heard.”16
And during the 110th Congress (2007–2009), Lincoln
introduced legislation investing in after-school programs
and childcare.
At the start of the 111th Congress (2009–2011),
with unified Democratic government for the first time
since her freshman term in the House, Lincoln became a
pivotal figure in the passage of President Barack Obama’s
legislative agenda. She supported health care reform
and a major overhaul of financial regulations.17 When
committee assignments changed in the wake of the death
of Massachusetts Senator Edward Moore (Ted) Kennedy
in 2009, Lincoln became the first woman to chair the Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry. “As a seventh-generation Arkansan and farmer’s daughter,
I know my father is smiling down on me today,” Lincoln
said.18 Lincoln’s signature accomplishment as chair was the
passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010,
which reformed public school lunch programs to combat
childhood obesity.19
Lincoln faced a primary challenger during the 2010
election cycle, Arkansas lieutenant governor Bill Halter,
who argued that Lincoln supported corporate interests over
those of working families.20 Halter forced a runoff primary
by coming within two percentage points of Lincoln during
the May 2010 primary.21 While Lincoln managed to defeat
Halter in the June 2010 runoff by four percentage points,
she faced further challenges during the general election.22
U.S. Representative John Boozman, whose brother Fay was
Lincoln’s first Republican senatorial challenger in 1998, ran
against Lincoln in the fall campaign and argued that she was
too supportive of President Obama’s policies, which were
largely unpopular in the state.23 Boozman defeated Lincoln
in the general election with nearly 58 percent of the vote.24
When she bid farewell to the Senate during a floor
speech on December 15, 2010, Lincoln said: “I came
to Congress to fight on behalf of our Nation’s children,
families, veterans, small businesses, and farmers, and I am
honored and humbled that in each of these areas, I was able
to achieve legislative success on their behalf.”25 After leaving
the Senate, Lincoln took a position as a policy adviser in a
Washington, DC, law firm.26
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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