As a working single mother, Lynn Woolsey spent several
years receiving public assistance to help get by while she
raised three small children. “I know what it means to have
a safety net when you need help getting back on your feet,”
Woolsey recalled. “I can go to Washington and say, ‘I’ve
been there.’”1 Describing herself as the “first former welfare
mom to serve in Congress,” Woolsey focused on issues
facing children and families during her 20-year career in the
House of Representatives.2
Lynn Woolsey was born Lynn Carol Robinson in
Seattle, Washington, on November 3, 1937, to John Linn
and Virginia Elizabeth Robinson. Woolsey and her older
sister Joan spent their adolescence in Seattle. A graduate
of Seattle’s Lincoln High School, Woolsey attended the
University of Washington from 1955 to 1957. She left
school to marry Terry J. Critchett in 1958. His success
as a stockbroker enabled the couple to settle in northern
California’s Marin County. They had three children—
Joseph, Ed, and Amy—before they divorced in 1967.
Following her divorce, Woolsey found a secretarial job at a
local technology company and applied for welfare assistance
to help get by. She eventually became a human resources
manager at the company and, in 1980, opened a personnel
services firm. She married David C. Woolsey in 1971
and raised another child, Michael, but that marriage also
ended in divorce. Woolsey returned to college and earned
a bachelor’s degree from the University of San Francisco
in 1980.3
Woolsey first entered politics in 1984 when she won
a seat on the Petaluma city council Sonoma County. She
served on the city council until 1992 and was vice mayor for
the last year of her tenure.4
In 1992, when five-term incumbent California
Representative Barbara Boxer decided to run for the United
States Senate, Woolsey entered the race to succeed her. The
district encompassed the two counties just north of the
Golden Gate Bridge—Marin and most of Sonoma—one
of the nation’s most affluent areas. She finished ahead of
eight opponents in the Democratic primary with 26 percent
of the vote. In the general election against Republican
Bill Filante, a California assemblyman, Woolsey ran on
a platform that emphasized her experiences as a single
mother, businesswoman, and local council member. “That
identified me as somebody who had walked her talk,”
she recalled. Voters, she continued, “really respected the
fact that I’d struggled and prevailed and knew what I was
talking about.”5 Woolsey held a sizeable lead throughout
the race, and Filante suspended his campaign in September
1992 following complications from a surgery to remove a
cancerous tumor from his brain. Woolsey won the election
with 65 percent of the vote. Re-elected in 1994 with 58
percent of the vote, Woolsey won the next seven elections by
comfortable margins. In 2010 she was elected to the 112th
Congress (2011–2013) with 66 percent of the vote.6
When Woolsey claimed her seat in the House at the
start of the 103rd Congress (1993–1995), she received
assignments on three committees: Budget; Government
Operations; and Education and Labor (later renamed
Education and the Workforce). In the 104th Congress
(1995–1997), she left Government Operations and, in the
106th Congress (1999–2001), was reassigned from the
Budget Committee to the Science Committee. By the 108th
Congress (2003–2005), she was the Ranking Member on
the Education and Workforce Subcommittee on Education
Reform. When the Democrats took control of the House
in the 110th and 111th Congresses (2007–2011), Woolsey
served as chair of the Education and Labor Committee’s
Workforce Protections Subcommittee, and served as Ranking
Member of the subcommittee in the 112th Congress
(2011–2013) after returning to the House minority.7
As subcommittee chair, Woolsey’s measure to provide
job-protected leave for family members of injured soldiers
was incorporated into the 2008 defense authorization bill.
Upon its inclusion, Woolsey commented, “Military families
shouldn’t have to risk losing their jobs in order to meet the
needs of their loved ones, and with this bill, we are one step
closer to fulfilling our promise to them.”8
From her seat on the Education and Workforce
Committee, Woolsey used her personal experience on
government assistance to shape how House Democrats
approached the welfare-reform debates of the 1990s. She
was sharply critical of legislation that reduced the scope of
and imposed lifetime benefit limits for many programs.
Woolsey advocated expanding childcare programs and
supported paid parental-leave policies.9 She introduced
several bills to make school breakfast programs available to
all children and to make teenagers eligible for after school
snack programs. Her provisions were included in a child
nutrition reauthorization bill in the 105th Congress (1997–
1999). In the 107th Congress, she sponsored a measure that
required the Internal Revenue Service to help enforce child
support payments.10
She also worked to support students interested in
the STEM fields. In the 106th and 107th Congresses
(1999–2003), she introduced “Go, Girl” legislation to
encourage young girls to study science and math.11 In
the 111th Congress (2009–2011), Woolsey submitted an
amendment to a research and development bill to increase
the involvement of women and minorities in the sectors
of network and information technology by promoting
computer science programs for elementary, middle, and
high school students. Woolsey argued that this would
make “more students exposed to innovative, engaging, and
rigorous computer science curriculum at the K–12 level.”12
A prominent member of the Out of Iraq Caucus,
Woolsey criticized the George W. Bush administration’s
prosecution of the war, voted consistently to suspend
funding for the war, and introduced a bill to redirect
$60 billion in Pentagon funds toward domestic civilian
programs. Woolsey sponsored the Iraq War Powers Repeal
Act of 2006 to negate Congress’s authorization of military
force in Iraq, but the bill died in committee.13
Throughout her House career, Woolsey petitioned the
Bush and Barack Obama administrations to adopt the
Sensible, Multilateral American Response to Terrorism
(“SMART”) security strategy. Woolsey advocated for a
withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan
and called for military leaders to address “the root causes
of terrorism by engaging our international partners and
humanitarian community.”14 At the start of the Obama
administration, Woolsey supported the President’s efforts
to draw down troops and end the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan. She later objected to President Obama’s troop
surge in Afghanistan in 2011.15
Woolsey sponsored legislation that helped military
families with combat injuries and their readjustment to
civilian life. “It was so clear that veterans were coming back,
and they needed a lot of help,” she said. “And I was not for
the wars, ever, but I certainly was for veterans.”16 During
the 110th Congress, she sponsored the Support for Injured
Servicemembers Act which provided six months of unpaid,
job-protected leave to the relatives of service members who
were injured in the line of duty. The bill became law in
January 2008 as part of the National Defense Authorization
Act. For Woolsey, the bill “sends a message to our wounded
men and women that we will stand beside them as they deal
with the physical and mental wounds of war, an obligation
that we must honor for as long as they live.”17
Woolsey served as a co-chair of the Congressional
Progressive Caucus during the 111th Congress. The
caucus sought to “show that there was a left edge to the
Democrats,” Woolsey said, and it proposed a “People’s
Budget” as an alternative spending plan that, she later said,
“shows that you can tame the deficit without shredding the
safety net, without destroying Medicare, without giving the
back of the hand treatment to the middle class.”18
Throughout her congressional career, Woolsey tended
to her northern California district. She delivered hundreds
of millions of dollars back home for a variety of capital
intensive projects, including $9 million for a Petaluma River
flood control project and $52 million for a seismic retrofit
of the Golden Gate Bridge.19
After 20 years of service, Woolsey announced her
retirement from the House at the end of the 112th
Congress.20 In her farewell speech, Woolsey addressed
critics who accused her of “wanting a ‘perfect world.’ But I
consider that a compliment . . . . I’m absolutely certain that if
we don’t work toward a perfect world, we won’t ever come
close to providing a safe, healthy, and secure world for our
grandchildren and their grandchildren.”21
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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