Political Life
Humphrey was appointed as a member of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party by Rudy Perpich, the governor of Minnesota, to the Senate vacancy caused by the death of her husband, and served from January 25, 1978 to November 7, 1978 in the 95th Congress. She was the first spouse of a former Vice President to serve in Congress as well as the first woman to represent Minnesota in the U.S. Senate. She was not a candidate for the special election for the remaining term. "It was the most challenging thing I've done in my whole life," she said. Twenty-eight years later, Amy Klobuchar, a fellow DFLer, would become the first woman to be elected to the United States Senate from Minnesota.
Looking back at her political life, Humphrey reflected "There's something I've been wanting to say for a long time. I'm a liberal and I'm proud of it. In fact, I was probably a little more liberal than Hubert was. I just wanted to say that." While in office, and after, she pressed for the right for women to choose to have an abortion and worked towards legislation for the rights of the mentally disabled.
Read more about this topic: Muriel Humphrey
Famous quotes related to political life:
“The general review of the past tends to satisfy me with my political life. No man, I suppose, ever came up to his ideal. The first half [of] my political life was first to resist the increase of slavery and secondly to destroy it.... The second half of my political life has been to rebuild, and to get rid of the despotic and corrupting tendencies and the animosities of the war, and other legacies of slavery.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)