Claire McCaskill facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Claire McCaskill
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Official portrait, 2012
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| United States Senator from Missouri |
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| In office January 3, 2007 – January 3, 2019 |
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| Preceded by | Jim Talent |
| Succeeded by | Josh Hawley |
| Ranking Member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee |
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| In office January 3, 2017 – January 3, 2019 |
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| Preceded by | Tom Carper |
| Succeeded by | Gary Peters |
| 34th Auditor of Missouri | |
| In office January 3, 1999 – January 3, 2007 |
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| Governor | Mel Carnahan Roger Wilson Bob Holden Matt Blunt |
| Preceded by | Margaret Kelly |
| Succeeded by | Susan Montee |
| Prosecutor of Jackson County | |
| In office 1993–1998 |
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| Preceded by | Albert Riederer |
| Succeeded by | Robert Beaird |
| Member of the Missouri House of Representatives from the 42nd district |
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| In office January 5, 1983 – February 2, 1988 |
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| Preceded by | James Barnes |
| Succeeded by | Joseph Kenton |
| Personal details | |
| Born |
Claire Conner McCaskill
July 24, 1953 Rolla, Missouri, U.S. |
| Political party | Democratic |
| Spouses |
David Exposito
(m. 1984; div. 1995)Joseph Shepard
(m. 2002) |
| Children | 3 |
| Education | University of Missouri (BA, JD) |
Claire Conner McCaskill ( born July 24, 1953) is an American former politician who served as a United States senator from Missouri from 2007 to 2019 and as State Auditor of Missouri from 1999 to 2007.
McCaskill is a native of Rolla, Missouri. She graduated from the University of Missouri and the University of Missouri School of Law. A member of the Democratic Party, McCaskill served as a member of the Missouri House of Representatives from 1983 to 1989, as Jackson County Prosecutor from 1993 to 1998, and as the 34th State Auditor of Missouri from 1999 to 2007. She ran for governor of Missouri in the 2004 election, defeating Democratic incumbent Bob Holden in the Democratic primary and losing to Republican Matt Blunt in a close general election.
McCaskill was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2006, the first woman to be elected U.S. senator from Missouri (Jean Carnahan was appointed upon the death of her husband). Re-elected in 2012, McCaskill was defeated in 2018 by Republican challenger Josh Hawley. As of February 2019[update], McCaskill is a political analyst for MSNBC and NBC and a visiting fellow at the University of Chicago Institute of Politics.
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Early life, education and early law career
McCaskill was born in Rolla, Missouri. Her 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, the father of U.S. Senator Roy Blunt and grandfather of former Missouri Governor Matt Blunt.
McCaskill spent her early childhood in the small Missouri town of Houston, later moving to Lebanon, and eventually Columbia. She attended David H. Hickman High School in Columbia, where she was a cheerleader, Pep Club president, a member of the debate club, a musical cast member, and 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. In the summer of 1974, before graduating from the University of Missouri, McCaskill studied at the Institute on Comparative Political and Economic Systems at Georgetown University.
From the time she graduated from law school in 1978 until her exit from the U.S. Senate in January 2019, McCaskill spent all but three years of her professional career in the public sector. The exception is the three years she spent in private practice as an attorney in a Kansas City law firm (1989 to 1991). Following her graduation from law school, she 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.
Early political career
State legislature
In 1982, McCaskill was elected to represent the Brookside neighborhood of Kansas City in the Missouri House of Representatives. She left the State House and contemplated running for Jackson County Prosecutor in 1988, but did not pursue the position when her mentor, 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 December 1991, McCaskill announced her intention to run for county prosecutor. At the time of the announcement, Riederer had not announced whether he was going to seek reelection. McCaskill said that crime had "run amok" during Riederer's eleven years as county prosecutor. McCaskill won the Democratic primary, and she went on to win the 1992 general election with 53 percent of the vote. McCaskill was the first woman to serve as prosecutor for Jackson County. She was reelected in 1996 with 71 percent of the vote.
State auditor
In 1998, McCaskill was elected as state auditor with 50.3 percent of the vote in the general election. She was the second female to hold the post, the first having been her immediate predecessor, Margaret B. Kelly.
When McCaskill ran for reelection in 2002, the winner of the Republican Party primary was Al Hanson, who had previously been incarcerated for fraud. Hanson said he was qualified to detect fraud because he had committed fraud himself. Because of Hanson's history, the leader of the Missouri Republican Party urged voters not to vote for Hanson in the general election. McCaskill was reelected with 60 percent of the vote.
2004 gubernatorial campaign
McCaskill announced her intent to challenge incumbent governor Bob Holden in the Democratic primary on October 20, 2003.
On August 3, 2004, McCaskill defeated Holden, becoming the first candidate to defeat an incumbent governor in a primary election in state history. McCaskill carried much of the rural outstate, while also carrying areas whose voters had taken issues with Holden's actions, such as in Boone County home to the University of Missouri, which faced cuts under Holden.
On November 2, 2004, McCaskill lost to her Republican opponent, 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 twenty-year political career.
U.S. Senate
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McCaskill was 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. In 2006, McCaskill defeated Talent for a full term. In 2011, she became Missouri's senior Senator when Roy Blunt took office as the junior Senator.
Political positions
Through 2012, McCaskill was named by the National Journal as one of the ten most "moderate" senators. In 2011, she was ranked 50th on its scale of the 100 senators, from most liberal to most conservative. In 2013, the National Journal rated McCaskill's voting record as 53% liberal and 47% conservative. The Washington Post reported in 2012 that she was the second-most-likely Democratic senator to vote against her party. The conservative Americans for Prosperity gave her a 30% score for being in line with their positions in 2016. The progressive Americans for Democratic Action gave her a 65% liberal quotient in 2015. As of 2018, FiveThirtyEight, which tracks Congressional votes, found that McCaskill voted with President Donald Trump's position 45% of the time.
Economic issues
In 2013, the National Journal gave her a 46% score on "Liberal on Economic Policy" and a 53% score on "Conservative on Economic Policy". In 2016, FreedomWorks and the Club for Growth, both of which support lower taxes, gave her ratings of 10% and 15%, respectively.
In November 2017, President Trump visited Missouri to promote his tax bill and said that if McCaskill didn't support his tax plan, she should be voted out of office. She said that she could support a tax bill put together "in a bipartisan way" and that she would support "doubling the standard deduction", "enhancing the child tax credit", and even "some corporate tax relief as long as we were cleaning up some of the loopholes that allow so many corporations to avoid paying their fair share." But she did not support Trump's tax bill, which in Missouri, she said, would mainly help rich St. Louis suburbanites.
Ahead of an August 7, 2018, Missouri vote on Proposition A on adopting a right-to-work law in Missouri, McCaskill endorsed a "no" vote on the proposition.
Immigration
In 2010, McCaskill voted for the DREAM Act, which would have given undocumented immigrants who entered the United States as children a pathway to citizenship provided that they fulfilled certain conditions.
In January 2018, McCaskill and three other Democratic senators were cosponsors of the Border and Port Security Act, legislation that would mandate that US Customs and Border Protection "hire, train and assign at least 500 officers per year until the number of needed positions the model identifies is filled" in addition to requiring the commissioner of Customs and Border Protection to determine potential equipment and infrastructure improvements that could be used for ports of entry.
McCaskill has said that "protecting the DREAMers has to be a very top priority." McCaskill opposed the Trump administration's policy of separating immigrant families who illegally crossed the border, and supported legislation to end the family separation policy.
Government spending
McCaskill co-sponsored the Saving Federal Dollars Through Better Use of Government Purchase and Travel Cards Act, which sought to improve the processes related to the use of credit cards by government employees.
Armed services
As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCaskill has called for nuclear weapons modernization. In June 2017, she voted to support Trump's $350 billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia.
Disaster recovery
As a member of the Senate ad hoc subcommittee on disaster recovery, McCaskill criticized the Federal Emergency Management Agency's handling of Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts.
Health care
McCaskill voted for the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, popularly known as ObamaCare, in December 2009.
In April 2017, McCaskill expressed her opposition to a single-payer healthcare system, saying it is too expensive and not realistic.
In August 2017, McCaskill introduced the Health Care Options for All Act, whereby people living in counties with no health-care exchanges "would be able to buy coverage through the D.C. small business exchange, called SHOP", with the U.S. government "contribut[ing] toward the cost of premiums if they meet a certain income threshold." Criticizing Trump's health-care bill in September 2017, she called it "a bait-and-switch, in which they're trying to buy off certain states with promises of more money now, but with no guarantee that healthcare dollars in our state won't ultimately go down." She added that the bill would not help "folks in Missouri who've been sick before and have a pre-existing condition, and older Missourians."
At each event during her 2018 re-election bid campaign, McCaskill asked attendees with preexisting conditions to stand up, and vowed to keep in place health insurance protections for such individuals.
Gun law
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McCaskill received an "F" rating from the NRA Political Victory Fund (NRA-PVF) for not supporting their view of Second Amendment rights and opposing all right-to-carry legislation.
She voted for expanded background checks and co-sponsored the "Feinstein Amendment," a proposal that would have made it illegal for individuals on the terror watchlist to purchase guns.
LGBT rights
On March 24, 2013, McCaskill posted to Tumblr in support of same-sex marriage: "While churches should never be required to conduct marriages outside of their religious beliefs, neither should the government tell people who they have a right to marry."
Net neutrality
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In January 2018, McCaskill announced her support for a Senate bill intended to reverse the Federal Communications Commission's repeal of net neutrality; as she was the 30th Senator to support the bill, it was ensured that the bill would reach the floor of the Senate. In October 2017, McCaskill was one of four Democrats who voted to confirm FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai, who announced the plan to reverse net neutrality rules earlier that year. In explaining her vote, McCaskill said that she disagreed with Pai on net neutrality but voted for Pai because "the president has a right to the chairman because he won the election". According to Ars Technica, "it's common for [FCC] commissioners to get broad bi-partisan support in the Senate even if their policies are opposed by one of the two major parties."
Trade
McCaskill opposed Trump's trade tariffs, saying they were "hurting Missouri farmers and manufacturing."
Israel Anti-Boycott Act
In June 2017, McCaskill co-sponsored the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, Senate Bill 720, which made it a federal crime, punishable by a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment, for Americans to encourage or participate in internationally sponsored boycotts against Israel and Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories if protesting actions by the Israeli government.
Voting rights
In July 2018, McCaskill introduced legislation that would make it illegal to knowingly and intentionally spread false information about an election, such as false information about the time and place of voting, voter qualifications and registration status. She said, "Misinformation campaigns intended only to suppress the vote and disenfranchise Missourians are crimes that run counter to our democratic values."
Committee assignments
- Committee on Armed Services
- Subcommittee on Airland
- Subcommittee on Cybersecurity
- Subcommittee on Personnel
- United States Senate Committee on Finance
- United States Senate Finance Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness
- United States Senate Finance Subcommittee on Taxation and IRS Oversight
- Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs (Ranking Member)
- Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security
- Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (Ranking Member)
- Ad Hoc Subcommittee on State, Local, and Private Sector Preparedness and Integration
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, and the United States Senate Homeland Security Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Contracting Oversight, which was disbanded in 2013.
Career after public office
On January 15, 2019, McCaskill joined NBC News and MSNBC as a political analyst. McCaskill is featured as a regular guest on Deadline: White House and Morning Joe. She also makes frequent appearances on The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell and The 11th Hour with Brian Williams along with, MSNBC and NBC News Special Event Breaking News Coverage.
In May 2021, McCaskill was reportedly being considered for an ambassadorship in Europe under the Joe Biden administration.
In October 2022, McCaskill joined the Council for Responsible Social Media project launched by Issue One to address the negative mental, civic, and public health impacts of social media in the United States co-chaired by former House Democratic Caucus Leader Dick Gephardt and former Massachusetts Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healey.
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 murdered in Kansas City, Kansas on December 12, 2005. Exposito's murder has never been solved.
McCaskill married Joseph Shepard in 2002.
On the October 3, 2009, episode of Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! on National Public Radio, McCaskill spoke about a vacation early in her career as a lawyer, where she was a contestant on High Rollers. McCaskill reigned as champion for four days, and later sold several of her prizes to pay off her student loan debt.
McCaskill's mother, Betty Anne McCaskill, died on October 29, 2012, from natural causes at the age of 84.
McCaskill maintains residences in Washington, D.C. and Kirkwood, a suburb of St. Louis. She joined Sheryl Sandberg's movement to encourage young women to be more assertive in professional interactions. On February 22, 2016, McCaskill announced that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She stated through Tumblr, "It's a little scary, but my prognosis is good and I expect a full recovery."
Honors
Scholastic
| Location | Date | School | Degree |
|---|---|---|---|
 Missouri |
1975 | University of Missouri | Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Political science |
| Missouri |
1978 | University of Missouri School of Law | Juris Doctor (JD) |
| Location | Date | School | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
 Illinois |
2019 – present | University of Chicago Institute of Politics | Fellow |
Honorary degrees
| Location | Date | School | Degree | Gave commencement address |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Missouri |
2009 | William Woods University | Doctorate | Yes |
Memberships and non-scholastic fellowships
| Location | Date | Organization | Position |
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| Missouri |
1978 – present | The Missouri Bar | Member |
Awards
| Location | Date | Institution | Award |
|---|---|---|---|
| Missouri |
21 April 2009 | University of Missouri | Outstanding Alumni Service Award for service to the University of Missouri System |
| Missouri |
6 April 2019 | Missouri Military Academy | General Clifton B. Cates "I Will Hold" Award |
| Missouri |
13 October 2020 | National Council of Jewish Women (St. Louis Chapter) | Hannah G. Solomon Founder's Award |
| Missouri |
2 December 2020 | City of Independence Missouri | Harry S. Truman Public Service Award |
See also
In Spanish: Claire McCaskill para niños
- Barack Obama Supreme Court candidates
- Women in the United States Senate
