Early Life, Education, and Early Political Career
Cantwell was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. She was raised in a predominantly Irish-American neighborhood on the south side of Indianapolis. Her father, Paul F. Cantwell, served as county commissioner, city councilman, state legislator, and Chief of Staff for U.S. Representative Andrew Jacobs, Jr. Her mother, Rose M., was an administrative assistant. Her ancestry includes Irish and German.
She attended Emmerich Manual High School and was inducted into the Indianapolis Public School Hall of Fame in 2006. After high school, Cantwell went to Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in Public Administration.
She moved to Seattle, Washington in 1983 to campaign for U.S. Senator Alan Cranston (D-CA) in his unsuccessful bid for the 1984 Democratic Presidential nomination. She then moved to the Seattle suburb of Mountlake Terrace because it reminded her of Indianapolis, and led a successful campaign to build a new library there.
Read more about this topic: Maria Cantwell
Famous quotes containing the words early, political and/or career:
“It is easy to see that, even in the freedom of early youth, an American girl never quite loses control of herself; she enjoys all permitted pleasures without losing her head about any of them, and her reason never lets the reins go, though it may often seem to let them flap.”
—Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859)
“For aesthetics is the mother of ethics.... Were we to choose our leaders on the basis of their reading experience and not their political programs, there would be much less grief on earth. I believe—not empirically, alas, but only theoretically—that for someone who has read a lot of Dickens to shoot his like in the name of an idea is harder than for someone who has read no Dickens.”
—Joseph Brodsky (b. 1940)
“They want to play at being mothers. So let them. Expressing tenderness in their own way will not prevent girls from enjoying a successful career in the future; indeed, the ability to nurture is as valuable a skill in the workplace as the ability to lead.”
—Anne Roiphe (20th century)