Path to Power
Blanche Lambert Lincoln was born into a seventh-generation Arkansas farm family on Sept. 30, 1960, in Helena, Ark. Her father and brother run a farm that grows rice, wheat, soybeans, and cotton. Today she makes her home in Horseshoe Lake, Ark., and enjoys duck hunting, fishing and yard sales.
Lincoln began college at the University of Arkansas before transferring to Randolph-Macon Woman’s College (now Randolph College) in Lynchburg, Va., where she earned her bachelor’s degree in 1982. She then went to work on the Washington staff of her hometown congressman, former U.S. Rep. Bill Alexander (D). Two years later, she began a stretch as a lobbyist for various firms around the capital. Frustrated with what she called “the system,” Lincoln moved home to Arkansas in 1992 and ran against Alexander, who was by then in hot water for being hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. “I’ll promise you one thing,” Lincoln said on the campaign trail, “I can sure enough balance my checkbook.” She beat the 12-term incumbent in the primary 61 to 39 percent, and won the general election with 70 percent of the vote.
She married Dr. Steve Lincoln, an obstetrician, in 1993.
After supporting most of the Republican “Contract with America,” led by Rep. Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), Lincoln was reelected by 53 to 47 percent in 1994. She was expected to win again in 1996 until she announced that she was pregnant with twins and would not campaign for reelection.
1998 Senate Bid
Incumbent Sen. Dale Bumpers (D) announced in 1998 that he would not run again for his seat, and Lincoln jumped into the race. Her ads showed her bouncing the twins on her knees with the tagline, “Daughter, wife, mother, congresswoman…Living out rock-solid Arkansas values.”
In the primary, Lincoln ran against state attorney general Winston Bryant, the Democratic nominee from the 1996 Senate race. She led the primary by 45 to 27 percent and won the runoff with 62 percent of the vote. In the general election, she battled ophthalmologist Fay Boozman, a state senator, and by won 55 to 42 percent. When she was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1998, Lincoln became the youngest female senator ever, at age 38.
During the campaign, Lincoln brushed off criticism that she couldn’t raise children and govern at the same time by pointing out that she was just another example of a working mother; after she was elected, her husband left his practice in Arkansas and joined one in Virginia.
New Democrat
In 2000, Lincoln co-founded the centrist Senate New Democrat Coalition with Senators Evan Bayh (D-Ind), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), and now retired Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.). The coalition is committed to “progressive ideas, mainstream values, and innovative, market-based policy solutions.”
National Republicans hoped to target Lincoln’s Senate seat in 2004, but their best hope, Republican Gov. Mike Huckabee, declined to run. Her opponent instead was state senator Jim Holt, who raised $106,000 to Lincoln’s $6.4 million. Arkansas residents had recently voted to prohibit same-sex marriage 74 to 26 percent, so Holt focused on Lincoln’s vote against the federal Family Marriage Amendment. Still, Lincoln won, 56 to 44 percent.
In the Senate, Lincoln sits on the Committee on Finance—a goal from day one, she has said – and the committees on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry; Energy and Natural Resources, and the Special Committee on Aging.
Lincoln founded and chairs the Senate Hunger Caucus and cofounded and cochairs Third Way, a nonprofit, nonpartisan progressive think tank.
