Barbara Mikulski takes off this week on the victory lap of her career as the Senate’s longest serving woman.
Friends and allies say that thanks in part to her, the exclusive 100-member body she’s leaving is much changed from the old boys club the social worker from East Baltimore burst into three decades ago. Mikulski blew past a sitting governor and an influential Congressman to arrive in the august marble chamber in 1987, one of only two women in the Senate. Thanks in part to her efforts, there are now 20 women senators; not near equal to the 50 percent female share of the US population, but a huge improvement.
Among those she campaigned for and befriended was Patty Murray, a Washington State Democrat elected in 1992 and now a Senate committee leader. She called Mikulski "a coach, a mentor, and an amazing friend to every senator here, but especially to the women."
"We are who we are today because she’s been there for us," Murray said.
Back in 1987, for example, the National Institutes of Health did not include women in medical research—not even female rats—on the assumption that gender didn’t matter; or, as Mikulski joked, "raging" female hormones might taint the results.
By 1990, the Maryland senator and her growing band of female colleagues in both the House and Senate won creation of an office of women’s health within NIH, which now says women make up half or more of its participants in clinical trials.
Connie Morella, a former Republican congresswoman from Montgomery County worked closely with Mikulski on the NIH legislation. She said the not-quite-five-foot-tall daughter of Highlandtown grocers "became kind of the American dream."
"The American dream in terms of removing stereotypical notions of ethnicity, of education, of size, of being a woman," Morella said. "And she did that so very well."
But Mikulski didn’t challenge every tradition. There was the bipartisan practice on the Senate Appropriations Committee of passing around pork barrel goodies that she left in the place when she became committee chair in 2012.
Delegate Maggie McIntosh, a former Mikulski aide, said her former boss wanted to "make sure that every member of that committee has buy-in to the committee work, and maybe gets something that they may need back home."
Mikulski lost the chairmanship in 2014 when Republicans won control of the Senate--a blow that may have played a role in her decision to retire. But her nearly 30 years on the panel helped make Mikulski one of Maryland’s most popular politicians.
She regularly brings home the bacon not only for federal agencies and contractors based in Maryland, but for commercial enterprises as well.
Just this week, she announced that she won funds for a new supercomputer at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s weather center in College Park; research jobs at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt and repairs and upgrades at the Social Security Administration headquarters in Woodlawn. On Christmas Eve, Maryland’s seafood industry celebrated her annual help in getting temporary visas for foreign crab pickers who take low-paying jobs Americans don’t want.
Though aides must carry around a step stool so Mikulski can see over the top of speaker’s rostrums, her booming voice packs a convincing punch when she promises to fight for her constituents and their causes.
Mary Pat Clarke, who served with Mikulski on the Baltimore City Council in the 1970s, said it’s a style that dates back to those days.
"She hasn’t changed," said Clarke, who still serves on the council. "She’s funny, she’s feisty; she cares about things."
In 1972, when Mikulski, then a freshman on the council, was launching her fight to stop I-95 from ripping through her district, she told the Baltimore Sun that she felt "something like a 620-pound acneed teenager trying to line up a date for the prom."
Connie Morella said Mikulski’s direct but clever, smart but plain-spoken approach is appealing. People liked that style, Morella said “because they could see some results." Mikulski "said what we thought."
But the pugnacious tone wears thin with legislative aides and much of the press corps. Washingtonian magazine has repeatedly ranked Mikulski among the meanest members of Congress. Her bark and bite demeanor is so well known President Obama joked about it last month as he was presenting Mikulski with a presidential medal of freedom.
"Let’s just say you don’t want to be on the wrong side of Barbara Mikulski," he said.
Maggie McIntosh, now chair of the Maryland House Appropriations Committee, said enduring Mikulski’s prickly manner is the price of working with someone who sets high standards.
"The fact that she is the way she is puts a lot of demands on staff to try to keep up, be up, be smart, be strategic," McIntosh said. "And yet never forget the principles by which she lives her life and runs her office."
In fact, McIntosh said, many in the huge class of Mikulski staff alumni call themselves “BAMers” in tribute to their former boss, Barbara A. Mikulski. The BAMers were among those most shocked early last year when Mikulski announced she would voluntarily surrender her safe Senate seat at the end of this term.
At 79, she’s still full of spit and vinegar, which she put on display at a Maryland Democratic party fundraiser in her honor last fall. First she complained that the sound system didn’t work. Then she decided she didn’t need it, anyway, and forged ahead.
"A few months ago, I announced that I was not going to run for another term," Mikulski said. "I want you to know that though I’m retiring I don’t intend to write the final chapter. I’m going to be out here to work for you, to work for our community and to give it everything I’ve got so that everybody in this community--and in this country--gets a fair shot."
It’s not yet clear what Mikulski’s new role will be—or even how she will spend this last year on Capitol Hill. When she announced her decision not to seek re-election, she said in typical fashion that she’d rather spend her time “raising hell” instead of raising money. BAMers think the explanation might be a bit more complicated. But one thing’s for sure. She won’t go quietly.