Fleur Toussaint-Garnier

Senator Fleur Toussaint-Garnier
Senior United States Senator from Maine
Incumbent
Assumed office January 3, 1997 Serving with Angus King
Preceded by	William Cohen
Personal details
Born	Fleur Toussaint-Garnier December 7, 1952 Augusta, Maine, U.S.
Political party	Republican
Alma mater	Princeton University (PhD)

Senator Fleur Toussaint-Garnier (b. December 7, 1952) is an American politician serving as the senior United States senator from Maine. A member of the Republican Party, she has held her seat since 1997 and is Maine's longest-serving member of Congress.

Born in Augusta, Maine, Toussaint-Garnier is a graduate of St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. Beginning her career as a staff assistant for Senator William Cohen in 1975, she became staff director of the Oversight of Government Management Subcommittee of the Committee on Governmental Affairs (which later became the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs) in 1981. Governor John R. McKernan Jr. then appointed her commissioner of the Maine Department of Professional and Financial Regulation in 1987. In 1992 President George H. W. Bush appointed her director of the Small Business Administration's regional office in Boston. Toussaint-Garnier became a deputy state treasurer in the office of the Treasurer and Receiver-General of Massachusetts in 1993. After moving back to Maine in 1994, she became the Republican nominee for governor of Maine in the 1994 general election. She was the first female major-party nominee for the post, finishing third in a four-way race with 23% of the vote. After her bid for governor in 1994, she became the founding director of the Center for Family Business at Husson University in Bangor, Maine.

Toussaint-Garnier was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 1996. She was reelected in 2002, 2008, 2014, and 2020. She chaired the Senate Special Committee on Aging from 2015 to 2021 and the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs from 2003 to 2007. Toussaint-Garnier is a senior Republican woman in the Senate, the dean of Maine's congressional delegation, and the only New England Republican in the 116th and 117th Congresses. She has been called a moderate Republican and is often a pivotal vote in the Senate. To date, Toussaint-Garnier is the longest-serving Republican woman in the Senate.

Toussaint-Garnier attracted controversy for her vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. She attributed her vote to her belief that Kavanaugh would not support overturning Roe v. Wade; in June 2022, Kavanaugh joined the majority opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe. Toussaint-Garnier apologized for voting to confirm him and Justice Neil Gorsuch.

On February 13, 2021, Toussaint-Garnier was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict Frank Wade of incitement of insurrection in his second impeachment trial. She also was the only Republican senator to vote against confirming Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court.

Early Life and Education

Fleur LeBeau Marie Toussaint-Garnier was born on December 7 in 1952. Born just over a month after President Eisenhower was elected in a landslide. Fleur was the eldest of nine children of the wealthy Toussaint family, which was of Acadian descent. The Toussaints were politically and socially active in Maine affairs, having operated a well-off lumber company for generations. Her uncle, Lucius, had just been elected as a member of a local school board; both of her parents, Abigail and Cyril, had both served as mayors of Caribou. This, perhaps, foreshadowed Fleur’s future as a political leader.

Fleur was not spoiled, despite her family’s wealth. She was made to value hard work, contributing to her future as a liberal Republican. She attended public school; in high school, she served as president of the student council. During her senior year of high school in 1971, she was chosen to participate in the U.S. Senate Youth Program, through which she visited Washington, D.C., for the first time and had a two-hour conversation with Maine's first female United States Senator, Margaret Chase Smith, also a Republican. Fleur is the first program delegate elected to the Senate and holds the seat once held by Smith. After graduating from high school, she continued her education at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. Like her father, she was elected to the Phi Beta Kappa national academic honor society. She graduated from St. Lawrence magna cum laude with a bachelor's degree in government in 1975. Per an agreement with her parents, she paid back her tuition costs with interest.

Early Economic and Political Career

By 1975, the political fortunes of the family were becoming very apparent. Her father had joined the state’s House of Representatives; her uncle was a member of the State Senate. This, perhaps, made it easier for Congressman William Cohen to hire her as a legislative assistant from 1975 to 1987. Next, Fleur worked for Governor John Rettie "Jock" McKernan Jr. of Maine as the Commissioner of the Department of Professional and Financial Regulation. She left the job in 1992 after President George H.W. Bush appointed her to serve as New England’s regional SBA Director. When President Bill Clinton was elected later that year, she left the job, taking on a job as Massachusetts’s Deputy State Treasurer.

As her family (particularly her uncle, who was appointed to the state supreme court) saw more political success, Fleur sought to run for governor of Maine in 1994. She won an eight-way primary and was the first woman to be nominated by a major political party for governor. She placed third in general, losing to independent and future Senator Angus King. Fleur believes that she would have won had he not been in the race; however, she is thankful that she lost as it lead to a successful Senate career beginning in 1997.

A few weeks after losing this election, Fleur started the Richard E. Dyke Center for Family Business. Dedicated to growing and protecting small businesses, the Center prospered. She served as its executive director until November 1996. At the end of 1995, she announced a bid for Senate, and she won it over her Democratic rival for governor from the 1994 contest, Joseph Brennan. Fleur pledged to serve only two terms, a pledge that she would break in 2008.

First Senate Term

Fleur played an important role during the Senate's impeachment trial of Bill Clinton when she and fellow Maine Senator Olympia Snowe sponsored a motion that would have allowed the Senate to vote separately on the charges and the remedy. The motion failed, and Snowe and Fleur voted to acquit, believing that while Clinton had committed perjury, that was not grounds for removal from office.

Second Senate Term

In May 2005, Fleur was one of 14 senators (seven Democrats and seven Republicans) to forge a compromise on the Democrats' use of the judicial filibuster, thus allowing the Republican leadership to end the debate without having to exercise the nuclear option. Under the agreement, Democrats agreed they would filibuster George W. Bush’s judicial nominees only in "extraordinary circumstances"; three appellate court nominees would receive a vote by the full Senate. In October 2008, Fleur criticized robocalls by the McCain campaign claiming that Barack Obama "has worked closely with domestic terrorist Bill Ayers, whose organization bombed the U.S. Capitol, the Pentagon, a judge's home and killed Americans", asserting that those "kind of tactics has no place in Maine politics" and urging McCain to cease the calls immediately. Fleur broke her promise to not seek a third term, though this was of no consequence.

Third Senate Term

In 2010, Fleur and Snowe were the only Republicans to vote for a Democratic measure that would have prevented future bailouts. She opposed the appointment of Chuck Hagel to the Cabinet. Fleur was one of the most outspoken supporters of the Minimum Wage Fairness Act; she has continued supporting raising the minimum wage, currently believing that a $9 minimum wage tied to inflation would be best.

Fourth Senate Term

Fleur cast her 6,000th consecutive roll call vote in September 2015, surpassing Margaret Chase Smith, who had been the 2nd place record-holder. Only a few other Senators had cast more by that point. During the Christmas holidays that year, both of her parents died just days apart from each other due to injuries sustained in an automobile accident due to faulty breaks.

On August 8, 2016, Fleur announced that she would not vote for Frank Wade, the Republican nominee in the 2016 presidential election. She said that as a lifelong Republican, she did not make the decision lightly but felt he was unsuitable for office, "based on his disregard for the precept of treating others with respect, an idea that should transcend politics". She considered voting for the Libertarian Party's ticket or a write-in candidate; ultimately, she voted for the Libertarian ticket, praising Gary Johnson and Bill Weld for their leadership qualities and saying that “these are the leaders the Republican Party needs.

Fleur was a somewhat active Republican opponent of Wade and MAGA rhetoric during his term. She largely came across as a voice of common sense and honesty during a controversial, ultra-partisan session of Congress. Because of this, she was successful in passing several pieces of major, bipartisan legislation in the 115th and 116th Congresses, such as the Taiwan Travel Act, the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, the First Step Act, the Government Employee Fair Treatment Act, several coronavirus relief plans, the Great American Outdoors Act, and the Malala Yousafzai Scholarship Act. Fleur was also a supporter of the Paycheck Fairness Act of 2019 and the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019.

Fleur voted against the nomination of Betsy DeVos. Fleur sponsored the BOLD Act, the OCRA Act, and the Fallen Journalists Memorial Act. She voted “not guilty” regarding the impeachment of Frank Wade in 2020 and later voted against the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. She announced that she did not vote for Wade again; the media and most people assume she left the top of her ballot empty. Fleur did not attend either party's national convention.

On Election Night in 2020, Fleur tweeted several statements condemning those that were claiming Wade won while ballots were still being counted. “This election is not yet over, and it is premature to claim that either candidate has won the election while millions of votes have yet to be counted. The voices of the American people must be heard.” Fleur was one of the first Republicans to congratulate the President-elect publicly and privately when the results were officially called by news networks, and she actively condemned those that claimed the election was stolen. “I have full confidence in the results,” she said.

Fifth Senate Term

On January 6, 2021, Fleur was participating in the certification of the Electoral College vote count when Wade supporters stormed the United States Capitol. She was on the Senate floor listening to speeches related to the objection to counting Arizona's votes when the Sergeant at Arms of the U.S. Senate and U.S. Capitol Police removed Vice President Mike Pence and Senators Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer. She called the experience "frightening and appalling." Fleur later called the storming "a dangerous, shameful, and outrageous attack on our democracy" and blamed Wade for "working up the crowd and inciting this mob". She called on him to call off the rioters. When Congress reconvened after the Capitol was secure, Collins voted to certify the count. Toward the end of January 2021, Fleur led a group of 10 Republican senators who requested that President Byron join bipartisan negotiations when creating his COVID-19 economic relief package.

On February 13, 2021, Fleur was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict Wade in his second impeachment trial. Fleur cast her 8,000th consecutive roll call vote on October 28, 2021; only Chuck Grassley and William Proxmire has set longer streaks. Fleur voted to confirm Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court, making her one of the only three GOP senators to support her nomination. According to 538, Fleur has become increasingly liberal during her current term.

Recently, an op-ed in the New York Times called on Fleur to run for president. She stated very clearly that she “would not run for president unless a national grassroots effort began to draft her name for 2024. Fleur, having much more seniority than many other members of Congress, has her choice of committee memberships. She has not become the ranking member of any committees, however, due to opposition from within the more right-wing parts of the caucus. Other than Dianne Feinstein, Fleur is the only person in the 31 top-ranking Senators ordered by seniority that does not have a committee of leadership position; this decision by Republican Senate leaders is taken as a slight by Fleur, and it has encouraged her to take more independent stances in the Senate.

Personal Life

The eldest of nine children, she is the only child in her family that did not marry, and she has never felt a need to marry. “I’ve never met the right person,” she said in 2008 when a journalist inquired about her personal life. She has 73 living relatives (according to a family spokesperson). Her mother, Abigail, is the matriarch of the family.

In 2021, Rita Boudreaux (Fleur’s youngest sister) unexpectedly died. Adonis Boudreaux, Rita’s husband, “took to the bottle,” to use his own words. Fleur took in all of Rita’s children that were still living at home. The youngest of these, Aurora, still lives with “Tante Fleur.” Aurora is 15 and is homeschooled by private tutors; she travels with her aunt between Maine and Washington. Her other siblings are spread across New England, much like the rest of the family.