olympia snowe
Olympia Jean Snowe McKernan (born February 21, 1947) is the senior United States Senator from Maine. She is a Republican and a leading moderate within the party.
Snowe has become widely known for her ability to influence the outcome of close votes, including whether to end filibusters.
In 2006, she was named one of America's Top Ten Senators by Time Magazine.Congressional Quarterly noted that her presence at the negotiating table in the 107th Congress was "nearly a necessity."
On May 23, 2005, Snowe was one of fourteen senators dubbed the Gang of 14, who defused a confrontation between Senate Democrats (who were filibustering several judicial nominees) and the Senate Republican leadership (who wanted to use the nominations as a flashpoint to eliminate filibusters on nominees through the so-called nuclear option). The Gang-brokered compromise precluded further filibusters and the implementation of the nuclear option for the remainder of the 109th Congress; under its terms, the Democrats retained the power to filibuster a Bush judicial nominee in an "extraordinary circumstance," and nominees (Janice Rogers Brown, Priscilla Owen and William Pryor) received a simple majority vote by the full Senate.
The Gang later played an important role in the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito, as they asserted that neither met the "extraordinary circumstances" provision outlined in their agreement. Snowe ultimately voted for both Roberts and Alito.
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