[Congressional Record Volume 170, Number 21 (Tuesday, February 6, 2024)]
[Senate]
[Pages S417-S418]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                       REMEMBERING JEAN CARNAHAN

  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I was saddened to learn last week of the 
passing of a trailblazing former member of our Senate family. Senator 
Jean Carnahan was the first woman ever to represent Missouri in the 
U.S. Senate.
  She was appointed to the Senate in December 2000, after her husband, 
then-Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan, lost his life in an airplane crash 
in the closing weeks of his Senate campaign. The Carnahans' eldest son 
Randy and Chris Sifford, a longtime political aide to the Governor, 
also perished in the plane crash.
  It was too late to remove Governor Carnahan's name from the ballot so 
1 week before the election, Missouri's acting Governor announced that 
he would appoint Jean Carnahan to serve in her late husband's place 
should the people of Missouri elect Governor Carnahan posthumously.
  In her first remarks in the Senate, Senator Carnahan told her new 
colleagues, ``I know I did not come to the U.S. Senate in the same way 
you did. I did not have a long-term, personal commitment to a campaign. 
My name has never been on a ballot. On election night there was no 
victory celebration. You are here because of your win; I am here 
because of my loss. But we are all here to do the work of this great 
nation.''
  The first Senator to greet her after she took her oath of office was 
someone who also knew the searing pain of losing a spouse and child. As 
Senator Carnahan later recalled, then-Senator Joe Biden assured 
Missouri's new Senator that she could endure her crushing loss. He also 
shared with her the same advice that had been given to him when he was 
elected to the Senate shortly after his wife Neilia and baby daughter 
Naomi were killed in a car crash.
  His advice was, ``Lose yourself in the work.'' In fact, as President 
Biden remarked last week after Senator Carnahan died, ``she found 
herself'' serving the people of her State in this Senate.
  She was elected as a Member of the first 50/50, evenly divided 
Senate. The 2 years she served were some of the most tragic and 
turbulent in our Nation's history. They included the 9/11 terrorist 
attacks on America, the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and 
the anthrax attack on the Senate.
  In a time of growing political division and acrimony, Senator 
Carnahan was a quiet but determined consensus seeker and a practical 
politician. She joined the Centrist Coalition, a bipartisan group of 
Senators. She focused on national security, conditions for members of 
the military, and military families. And she was part of the first 
congressional delegation to Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist 
attacks.
  While she had never held public office before, Jean Carnahan was not 
new to politics and public service; she had been serving the people of 
Missouri her entire adult life. She was born Jean Carpenter and grew up 
in a working-class section of Washington, DC. Her father was a plumber, 
and her mother was a hairdresser. She met her future husband, the son 
of a Missouri Congressman, when they were both 15 years old. They met 
first at church and a few days later at Anacostia High School, where 
they were seated next to each other.
  On their second date, he told her that he was going to marry her, and 
he was going to move back to Missouri to run for Congress. They married 
5 years later. The following year, Jean Carnahan graduated from George 
Washington University with a degree in business and public 
administration, the first member of her family to graduate from high 
school or college.
  True to his word, Mel Carnahan returned to Missouri and was elected 
to Congress, representing the Bootheel area of southeastern Missouri. 
He would go on to serve two terms as a popular Missouri Governor.
  In their early campaigns, Jean Carnahan was her husband's 
speechwriter and press secretary, and she was always his best and 
closest political confidante. She made the position of first lady of 
Missouri a full-time job and developed her own slate of child- and 
family-centered causes. She advocated successfully for establishing 
daycare centers at workplaces. Her focus on childhood immunizations 
helped boost Missouri's childhood immunization rate from 49th in the 
Nation to tenth. She also led a successful effort to renovate 
Missouri's Governor's mansion. She also was a gifted writer, author of 
seven books.
  Weeks before the end of her time in the Senate, in another cruel 
twist of fate, a different plane crash claimed the lives of another 
beloved member of this Senate, Senator Paul Wellstone, along with his 
wife Sheila, their daughter Marcia, three campaign staffers, and the 
plane's two pilots. In the dark days that followed, no one was a 
greater support to the devastated Wellstone staff than Senator Carnahan 
and her staff.
  In 2002, Senator Carnahan ran in a special election to serve the 
remainder of what would have been her husband's 6-year term. She lost 
in a razor-thin vote.
  In her final remarks on this floor, she thanked the people of 
Missouri for allowing three generations of Carnahans to serve their 
State. She also had some wise words of advice to the Senators that 
served with her and those who would follow her. I think her parting 
words are even more important today.
  Senator Carnahan implored us ``[W]hen my colleagues think on the role 
of government, seek a balance. Seek a balance between one that does 
everything and one that does nothing. And where there is talk of war, 
let there be the free and open debate that becomes our great Nation. 
And when there are judges to be appointed, let them be selected for 
their temperament and jurisprudence and not for political ideology that 
satisfies a special interest group.''
  She continued ``When we lay out our energy and environment policy, 
let it not be for short-term gain but for the well-being of our 
grandchildren and the survival of our planet. And when my colleagues 
speak of leaving no child behind, let that not be a mantra but a

[[Page S418]]

mission, fervent and funded. When health care is thought about, the 
health care needs of children, family, and seniors--and I hope that 
will be often--I urge my colleagues to lay aside partisanship and heed 
the plight of the hurting and the helpless in our society.''
  We would all do well to heed her thoughtful counsel.
  Loretta and I offer our sincere condolences to all those who are 
mourning her passing and especially to her family: her daughter Robin, 
Missouri's former secretary of state and the current head of the 
Federal General Services Administration, her sons Tom and Russ, a 
former Missouri Congressman, and her five grandchildren.
  Senator Jean Carnahan was an immensely strong and brave woman who 
made history and made this Senate, our Nation, and her beloved State of 
Missouri better. She will be missed.

                          ____________________