In 1971 Morella was appointed as a founding member to the Montgomery County Commission for Women, an advisory women's advocacy body, and she was elected its president in 1973. She became active in the
League of Women Voters. In 1974, she ran for the
Maryland House of Delegates from the 16th District (Bethesda), but did not win. She ran again in 1978, winning the seat and receiving more votes than the three previous incumbents. She was reelected for an additional term, before running for
United States Congress.
Congressional career In 1986, Morella ran for the open Congressional seat in
Maryland's 8th congressional district. The district was being vacated by Democrat
Michael Barnes, who was running for the Democratic nomination for the U.S. Senate. Morella's opponent in the general election was State Senator Stewart Bainum, a multimillionaire business executive who consistently outpolled her throughout most of the campaign. A major turning point came when Morella unexpectedly won endorsements from
The Baltimore Sun and
The Washington Post. She was the first woman to hold this seat. Although she was a Republican in an area that had become heavily Democratic, she proved highly popular among her constituents and won re-election seven times, serving until 2002. Morella opposes her party's positions on
abortion,
gun control,
gay rights, and the
environmental movement, voted for government funding of
contraceptives and
needle exchange programs for
drug addicts, and favored the legalization of
medical marijuana. She received some support from
organized labor and opposed many tax cuts. Morella, however, voted against President Clinton's
1993 budget, as all other Congressional Republicans did. She voted against declaring
English the official language of the
United States and, in 1996, against a bill overwhelmingly approved by Congress and signed by President
Bill Clinton to combat
illegal immigration. In 1996, Morella was one of only five Republicans to vote against the Cuban Liberty and Democratic Solidarity Act. In 1998, she was one of only three Republicans to vote against renaming the Washington National Airport the
Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. Morella was the only Republican in the entire Congress to have voted against approving the
use of military force in Iraq in 1991 and again in 2002. She was active in human rights, women's health, and
domestic violence issues in Congress, and served on the
Science and
Government Reform Committees. Morella was U.S. representative to the 1994
U.N. International Conference on Population and Development in
Cairo and co-chair of the Congressional delegation to the 1995 U.N.
Fourth World Conference on Women in
Beijing. Among the legislation she sponsored were the 1992 Battered Women's Testimony Act, which provided funds for indigent women to hire expert testimony in domestic abuse cases, and the Judicial Training Act, which funded programs to educate judges about domestic violence, especially in child custody cases. Morella came under greater pressure after her party took control of the House in 1994 Congressional elections. Although she signed the
Contract with America developed by Newt Gingrich, she had a mixed record supporting the subsequent Republican majority in Congress. She did not openly challenge the new House leadership until 1997 when she voted "present" for
Speaker of the House instead of for the incumbent,
Newt Gingrich. In 1998, she was one of four Republicans, along with
Amo Houghton and
Peter T. King of New York and
Chris Shays of Connecticut, to oppose all four
articles of
impeachment against Clinton during the
Lewinsky scandal. As a Republican representing an affluent Democratic district in an increasingly Democratic state, Morella faced a succession of increasingly strong Democratic challengers. While she managed to fend them all off, even in the big Democratic years of 1992, 1996, and 1998, the low popularity of the Republican-controlled Congress gradually undermined her. She tried to portray herself as giving her district a place at the table, but over time, Morella's Democratic opponents claimed that a vote for Morella was a vote to keep
Tom DeLay and other Republicans unpopular to district voters in power.
Committee assignments For the
107th Congress: •
Committee on Government Reform •
Subcommittee on Civil Service and Agency Organization • Subcommittee on District of Columbia (Chair) •
Committee on Science • Subcommittee on Environment, Technology, and Standards
Electoral challenges Maryland Senate President
Thomas V. "Mike" Miller stated that he intended to draw Morella's district out from under her after her relatively narrow reelection in 2000. The Democrats controlled both the State Legislature and the Governor's Office in 2000, thus controlling the
redistricting for the
2000 Census. Staffers from Senate President Miller, House Speaker Cas Taylor, and Governor
Parris Glendening drew new maps to
gerrymander out Morella and fellow moderate Republican
Bob Ehrlich. Although it forced Van Hollen and Shriver to run against each other in an expensive
primary, Van Hollen defeated Morella in 2002 with 52 percent of the vote to Morella's 47 percent (Morella would have narrowly won re-election in her previous district, according to election returns). Proving just how Democratic this new district is, the Republicans have only put up nominal challengers in the 8th since Morella's defeat; none of them have ever won more than 40 percent of the vote. In 2013, Morella signed an amicus curiae brief submitted to the Supreme Court in support of
same-sex marriage during the
Hollingsworth v. Perry case. Morella publicly endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden, a Democrat, in the 2020 US Presidential election, over Republican incumbent Donald Trump.
Ambassador to the OECD President
George W. Bush appointed her United States Permanent Representative to the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) on July 11, 2003. She was unanimously confirmed by the
United States Senate on July 31 and sworn in on October 8 of that year, becoming the first former member of Congress to serve as
ambassador to the OECD. She is an honorary board member of the
National Organization of Italian American Women who declared Morella a
Feminina Excelente. She officially served as Ambassador from August 1, 2003 to August 6, 2007. In November 2007, she was succeeded by Christopher Egan, son of
Richard Egan. ==2020 Presidential Election==