Olympia Snowe

Olympia Jean Snowe (née Bouchles; born February 21, 1947) is an American businesswoman and politician who was a United States senator, representing Maine for three terms from 1995 to 2013. A lifelong member of the Republican Party, Snowe played an influential role in influencing the outcome of close votes in the U.S. Senate and in ending U.S. Senate filibusters. In 2006, Time magazine named her one of "America's Best Senators". Throughout her U.S. Senate career, she was considered one of the chamber's most moderate members.

On February 28, 2012, Snowe announced that she would not seek re-election in the 2012 U.S. Senate election, and she retired when her third term ended on January 3, 2013. She cited hyperpartisanship, leading to a dysfunctional Congress, as her primary reason for her retirement. In January 2013, she was replaced by former Maine governor Angus King, a former Democrat and current independent who won the 2012 U.S. Senate election in Maine.

In May 2013, Snowe was appointed senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington, D.C., where she co-chairs its Commission on Political Reform and serves on the center's board of directors.

Snowe was born Olympia Jean Bouchles in Augusta, Maine, on February 21, 1947, the daughter of Georgia (née Goranites) and George John Bouchles. Her father emigrated to the United States from Sparta, Greece, and her maternal grandparents were Greek. She is a member of the Greek Orthodox Church.

When she was eight years old, her mother died of breast cancer. Less than a year later, her father died of cardiovascular disease. Left orphaned, she was moved to Auburn, where she was raised by her aunt, a textile mill worker, and uncle, a barber, along with their five children. Her brother John was raised separately by other family members. A few years later, disease also claimed her uncle's life. Snowe attended Saint Basil Academy in Garrison, New York, for third through ninth grades, and then returned to Auburn, where she attended and graduated from Edward Little High School.

She then attended the University of Maine in Orono, where she graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science in 1969. On December 29, 1969, shortly after graduating, she married Peter Snowe, a Republican Maine Representative, in New York City.

Snowe entered politics and rose quickly, winning a seat on the Board of Voter Registration and then working for U.S. representative and later U.S. senator and U.S. secretary of defense William Cohen.

In 1973, tragedy again struck Snowe when her husband was killed in an automobile accident. At the urging of her family, friends, neighbors, and local leaders, Snowe ran for her husband's Auburn-based seat in the Maine House of Representatives, and, at the age of 26, won it. In 1974, she was re-elected. In 1976, she won election to the Maine Senate, where she represented Androscoggin County. The same year, she was a delegate to both Maine's Republican convention and to the Republican National Convention in Kansas City, Missouri, which nominated Gerald Ford as its nominee in the 1976 presidential election.

In 1978, Snowe ran for the U.S. House of Representatives and won. From 1979 to 1995, she represented Maine's 2nd congressional district, which included most of the northern two-thirds of Maine, including Bangor and her hometown of Auburn. As a U.S. Representative, Snowe served on the House Budget and House Foreign Affairs committees.

As a U.S. Representative in August 1983, Snowe voted for the bill establishing Martin Luther King Jr. Day as a federal holiday. In March 1988, she voted in support of the Civil Rights Restoration Act of 1987 and in support of overriding President Reagan's veto of it.

In February 1989, Snowe married John R. McKernan Jr., then Governor of Maine. Snowe and McKernan served together as U.S. representatives from Maine between 1983 and 1986. McKernan represented Maine's 1st congressional district. After marrying McKernan, Snowe served simultaneously as First Lady of Maine from 1989 to 1995 and a member of Congress. In 1991, tragedy again struck Snowe when her stepson Peter McKernan died from a heart ailment at the age of 20.

Snowe shares a centrist ideology with Susan Collins, her former U.S. Senate colleague from Maine, who still serves in the Senate. Collins is considered a "half-turn more conservative" than Snowe, Time magazine reported in February 2009 In 2012, National Journal ranked Snowe a composite 57% conservative score and a 43% liberal score.

In 2012-13, according to GovTrack, Snowe was the most liberal Republican U.S. senator, ranked to the left of every Republican and several Democrats. Her highest National Journal composite conservative score was 63% in 2010, and her highest composite liberal score was a 55.5% in 2006.

In February 2007, Snowe endorsed Republican candidate John McCain in the 2008 presidential election. In December 2011, Snowe endorsed Republican candidate Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election.

In 2007, Snowe was one of several Republicans to vote in favor of legislation that would have granted citizenship to undocumented immigrants, but she voted against the DREAM Act in 2010. She also voted to continue funding to sanctuary cities, voted against eliminating the 'Y' guest worker visa program, voted in favor of building a fence along the southern border, and voted to make English the official language of the United States.

In the 111th Congress, Snowe backed the release of additional Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. She opposed President Barack Obama's budget resolution, but pledged to work in a bipartisan manner on health care reform and energy.

Snowe supported cutting taxes as an economic stimulus. In 2003, however, she joined two Republican senators, Lincoln Chafee and John McCain, in voting against the Jobs and Growth Tax Relief Reconciliation Act. In 2004, she was one of several Republicans to oppose accelerated implementation of the George W. Bush administration's tax cuts, citing budget concerns.

In national security and foreign affairs, Snowe supported President Bill Clinton's engagement in the Kosovo War. Following the September 11 attacks, she supported President George W. Bush's invasions of Afghanistan in 2001 and Iraq in 2003.

In Snowe's 2006 re-election campaign, she was one of two Republican Senate candidates endorsed by Human Rights Campaign, a gay rights organization. Snowe supports abortion rights and gay rights. In 2004, she voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment, an amendment banning gay marriage. In 2006, she voted against banning gay marriage for a second time. While she initially voted to block repeal of "Don't ask, don't tell" legislation, she was one of eight Republican senators to vote for the act's repeal on December 18, 2010, ending the policy.

In April 2013, after retiring from the U.S. Senate, Snowe announced her support for same-sex marriage.

In June 2013, Snowe was appointed to the board of directors of T. Rowe Price, a Baltimore-based Fortune 1000 investment management firm.

In January 2015, she said that she considered Jeb Bush and Hillary Clinton the least partisan 2016 presidential candidates. In the 2016 presidential election, she opposed Donald Trump as the Republican nominee.

On January 9, 2021, following the January 6 Capitol violence, Snowe called on Trump to "resign from office now to allow our nation to begin to heal and prepare for the transition to the Biden presidency".

The Olympia Snowe Women's Leadership Institute was founded by Snowe after retiring from the Senate in 2013. It offers a three-year program in leadership training in partnership with Maine high schools. By 2024, the institute had trained more than 700 Maine students. In 2024, the institute signed a charter agreement to establish its first alumni chapter at the University of Southern Maine.