Representative Ellen O. Tauscher

Ellen O’Kane Tauscher (November 15, 1951 – April 29, 2019) was an American businesswoman, diplomat, and Democratic Party politician who represented California’s 10th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1997 to 2009. A leading centrist Democrat, she chaired the New Democrat Coalition, a caucus of moderate Democrats in the House of Representatives, and served as vice-chairwoman of the Democratic Leadership Council from 2001 to 2005. After leaving Congress, she held senior positions at the U.S. Department of State, serving as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs from 2009 to 2012 and subsequently as Special Envoy for Strategic Stability and Missile Defense.

Tauscher was born in Newark, New Jersey, the daughter of John E. O’Kane, a shop steward for the United Food and Commercial Workers union at a ShopRite store in Union City, and his wife Sally, a secretary for Marsh & McLennan in New York City. She was raised in a working-class, union household that shaped her later views on labor and economic issues. She attended Seton Hall University in South Orange, New Jersey, graduating in 1974 with a Bachelor of Science degree in early childhood education. Although trained as an educator, she soon pursued a career in finance, entering an industry that at the time had few women in senior roles.

Following her graduation, Tauscher worked as an investment banker with Bache & Co. and, at age 25, became one of the first women and the youngest member of the New York Stock Exchange. She later served as an officer of the American Stock Exchange from 1979 to 1983, gaining experience in securities regulation and market operations. After leaving the American Stock Exchange, she worked for Bear Stearns and for a subsidiary of Drexel Burnham Lambert, further deepening her background in corporate finance and capital markets. In 1989, she moved to California, where she founded the ChildCare Registry, the first national research service designed to help parents verify the background of childcare workers. She also published The ChildCare Sourcebook and established the Tauscher Foundation, which provided funds for elementary schools to purchase computers and obtain Internet access, reflecting her interest in education and technology.

Before seeking elective office, Tauscher became active in Democratic politics as a fundraiser and political organizer. She chaired Senator Dianne Feinstein’s successful U.S. Senate campaigns in 1992 and 1994, building a statewide network and gaining experience in campaign strategy and finance. In 1996, she was recruited to run as the Democratic candidate in California’s 10th congressional district, then represented by two-term Republican incumbent Bill Baker. The district, centered in the East Bay and including several affluent suburbs, had been considered solid Republican territory, though its voters tended to be more moderate than Republicans elsewhere in California. During the campaign, Tauscher emphasized balancing the federal budget, support for business, environmental protection, and a strong military, while arguing that Baker was too conservative for the district, particularly in his opposition to abortion and gun control. In a closely contested and expensive race—ranked as the fourth most costly of the 435 House contests that year—she narrowly defeated Baker by a margin of 1.45 percent of the vote.

Ellen O. Tauscher took office in the 105th Congress in January 1997 and went on to serve seven consecutive terms, remaining in the House until her resignation in 2009. She was re-elected in 1998 and 2000 against vigorous Republican opposition, as Bay Area voters increasingly supported Democrats at the national level. Following the 2000 redistricting, more Republican-leaning areas of the 10th District were removed and replaced with more Democratic territory near Berkeley and in Solano County, after which she faced no substantive opposition and consistently received more than 65 percent of the vote in subsequent elections. During her congressional tenure, she lived in Pleasanton and later Alamo, California, and was recognized as a prominent centrist voice within the Democratic Party. She chaired the New Democrat Coalition and, as vice-chairwoman of the Democratic Leadership Council from 2001 to 2005, helped shape moderate Democratic policy positions on economic growth, national security, and social issues.

In the House of Representatives, Tauscher served on the Armed Services Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, positions that allowed her to influence both national security and domestic infrastructure policy. She chaired the Strategic Forces Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee, which oversees the nation’s nuclear weapons stockpile, missile defense programs, and the national laboratories. Uniquely among members of Congress, her district included two major national laboratories: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the California campus of Sandia National Laboratories. On the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, she served on the Highways and Transit Subcommittee and the Aviation Subcommittee, and by the time she left Congress she was the senior member from California on both panels. From these positions, she secured approximately $33 million in transportation and infrastructure funding for her district. Her voting record reflected her centrist orientation: she supported universal health care and expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), while also backing measures to scale back the estate tax, tighten bankruptcy rules, and expand free trade. She received an 11 percent lifetime rating from the American Conservative Union and a 95 percent rating for her 2008 voting record from Americans for Democratic Action.

Tauscher was a strong supporter of abortion rights and gun control, as well as an early advocate for LGBTQ rights. She received a 100 percent positive rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America and voted against bans on late-term and so-called partial-birth abortions. She supported federal funding for stem cell research, voting in favor of both Stem Cell Research Enhancement Acts. On firearms policy, she expressed support for the Second Amendment while calling for “common sense gun safety legislation” to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and individuals with histories of violence. She supported measures to arm commercial pilots, require background checks for legal gun owners, and ban inexpensive “Saturday night special” handguns, earning an “F” rating from the NRA Political Victory Fund. On LGBTQ issues, she opposed efforts to ban gays from the Boy Scouts and maintained a 100 percent rating from the Human Rights Campaign. In 2004, responding to President George W. Bush’s call for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, she publicly declared that marriage equality was “the civil rights issue of the 21st century” and that government could not discriminate by gender in conferring marital rights. She voted against the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment in 2006. On March 3, 2009, she introduced the Military Readiness Enhancement Act of 2009 to repeal the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy; although the repeal ultimately passed in a slightly different form in 2010 after she had left the House, her bill helped frame the legislative effort.

On foreign and defense policy, Tauscher initially supported the Iraq War but later became a critic of its conduct and duration. In October 2002, she voted in favor of the Iraq Resolution authorizing the use of military force in Iraq. As the conflict continued, she joined other Democrats in questioning the administration’s strategy. In December 2005, she led a group of twenty-two House Democrats in sending a letter to President George W. Bush urging the withdrawal of U.S. troops and calling for the Iraqi government to assume greater responsibility for its political and security needs. She later voted to redeploy U.S. forces from Iraq within 90 days and supported a resolution to impeach President Bush over the war, even as she continued to vote for funding measures such as H.R. 1585 to support troops in the field. In the 2008 presidential primaries, she was a strong supporter of Senator Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, traveling around the country as a campaign surrogate. After the 2008 election, she was among the first prominent former elected officials to join the Ready for Hillary effort, which became one of the largest independent grassroots organizations supporting an undeclared presidential candidate.

On March 18, 2009, President Barack Obama nominated Tauscher to serve as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security Affairs. The Senate confirmed her nomination by unanimous consent on June 25, 2009. Notwithstanding her appointment and confirmation, she returned to the House floor the next day, June 26, 2009, to serve as Speaker pro tempore when the House narrowly passed the American Clean Energy and Security Act, a cap-and-trade global warming bill, by a vote of 219–212. After the vote, she resigned her House seat on June 26, 2009, triggering a special election in California’s 10th District. As Under Secretary of State, she played a central role in arms control and nonproliferation policy. She led the U.S. negotiating team for the New START treaty with the Russian Federation, concluded in March 2010. The treaty, the first major arms control agreement with Russia in nearly two decades, was signed by Presidents Barack Obama and Dmitri Medvedev on April 8, 2010, and ratified by the U.S. Senate on December 22, 2010. Tauscher represented the United States at the 2010 Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) at the United Nations, which, for the first time in ten years, concluded with a consensus final document. She was also the lead State Department official negotiating bilateral agreements with Poland, Romania, and Turkey for the European Phased Adaptive Approach missile defense system, securing timely accords that allowed the administration’s deployment schedule to be met.

Tauscher served as Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security until February 6, 2012, when she was appointed Special Envoy for Strategic Stability and Missile Defense at the State Department. In that role, she continued to work on U.S.-Russian strategic stability issues and on the integration of missile defense into broader security arrangements. She retired from the State Department on August 31, 2012. After leaving government service, she entered the private and nonprofit sectors, taking on a wide range of corporate and advisory roles. She joined the boards of Edison International/Southern California Edison (EIX) in Rosemead, California, and eHealth (EHTH) in Mountain View, California, and served on the Board of Directors of BAE Systems, Invacare Corporation, and SeaWorld Entertainment. She was a member of the Board of Advisors of SpaceX and of the Board of Governors of The Commonwealth Club of California. She also served as vice chair of the Atlantic Council’s Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security and was a member of the University of California Board of Regents. In August 2013, she was elected independent chairperson of the Alliance for Bangladesh Worker Safety, a coalition of major North American clothing retailers and brands—including Wal-Mart, Target, Gap, Costco, and VF Brands—working with the government of Bangladesh, factory owners, and international organizations to improve safety conditions for garment workers.

In addition to her corporate and policy work, Tauscher remained engaged in public affairs and advocacy. She served as chairman of the Board of Governors for Los Alamos National Security and Lawrence Livermore National Security, overseeing the management entities for the two national laboratories with which she had long been associated. She was a member of the board of directors of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) and chairman of the NCCN Foundation, reflecting her growing involvement in health advocacy. She also worked as a strategic advisor to the Washington, D.C., law firm Baker Donelson on defense, transportation, energy, and health care issues, and was a member of the ReFormers Caucus of Issue One, a bipartisan group of former elected officials focused on political and campaign finance reform.

Tauscher’s personal life included two marriages and one child. She married William Tauscher, former chairman and CEO of Vanstar Corporation, director of Safeway, Inc., and founder of the Tauscher Group, an investment and management firm focused on home products, transportation, security, and real estate. The couple had one daughter, Katherine, born in 1991, and divorced in 1999. On the same day she assumed office as Under Secretary of State in 2009, she married James Cieslak, a widower and retired Delta Air Lines pilot; they divorced in 2011. In July 2010, she was diagnosed with Stage 3 esophageal cancer, a rapidly growing and often lethal disease with a low survival rate. She underwent an intensive course of chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery to remove her esophagus and was declared cancer-free in December 2010. Following her recovery, she became an outspoken advocate for cancer awareness, early screening, and increased research funding, frequently speaking around the country and using her positions with the NCCN and NCCN Foundation to advance these causes.

Ellen O. Tauscher died of pneumonia on April 29, 2019, at the age of 67, at Stanford University Medical Center in Stanford, California. Her career spanned finance, entrepreneurship, seven terms in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1997 to 2009, and senior diplomatic service in arms control and international security, during which she participated in the legislative and diplomatic processes at pivotal moments in recent American history and represented the interests of her California constituents and the United States abroad.