DOLE, ELIZABETH HANFORD

born July 29, 1936, Salisbury, N.C., U.S. ne Elizabeth Hanford, byname Liddy Dole American lawyer and public official whose considerable political experience included Cabinet appointments under two U.S. presidents. Elizabeth Hanford studied political science at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina (B.A., 1958), and graduated Phi Beta Kappa. After graduate studies at the University of Oxford she entered Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, and received an M.A. in education (1960) and, as one of 15 women in a class of 550, a J.D. (1965). Though she was a Democrat early in her life and later became an independent, Hanford eventually joined the Republican Party. After her admission to the bar of the District of Columbia in 1966, Hanford became a staff assistant at the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. She left her government position in 1967 to practice law privately in Washington, D.C., for a year. In 1968 she worked first as assistant director and then as director of the President's Committee on Consumer Interests. She worked as a public official for a number of years, holding jobs in the administrations of Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, and George Bush. While working in the Office of Consumer Affairs under Nixon, she met Kansas Senator Bob Dole, whom she married in 1975. From 1973 to 1979 she worked on the Federal Trade Commission. Under President Reagan she served as secretary of the Department of Transportation (198387). One of her most notable accomplishments in this position was the passage of a bill in 1983 mandating a high, centre-mounted third brake light on all passenger automobiles; however, Dole was criticized by some for ignoring other key safety issues, particularly those related to air travel. From 1989 to 1990 she served as labour secretary under President Bush; she left the position to head the American Red Cross. Dole left jobs four times in her career to work for her husband's unsuccessful campaigns for the vice presidency (1976) and the presidency (1980, 1988, and 1996). During the 1996 campaign, however, Dole herself became a favourite among many members of the Republican Party. She left her Red Cross post in 1999 to explore running for the Republican nomination for the 2000 U.S. presidential election. She became the first woman to make a serious attempt at the nomination, but by October 1999 she abandoned the race owing to campaign funding difficulties.