Lambert-Lincoln, Blanche, 1960-

Blanche Meyers Lambert Lincoln (born September 30, 1960) is an American politician who served as a United States Senator from Arkansas from 1999 to 2011. A member of the Democratic Party, she was first elected to the Senate in 1998; she was the first woman elected to the Senate from Arkansas since Hattie Caraway in 1932 and youngest woman ever elected to the Senate at age 38. She previously served in the U.S. House of Representatives, representing Arkansas's 1st congressional district from 1993 to 1997.

A native of Helena, Arkansas, Blanche Lambert attended the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville before graduating from Randolph-Macon Woman's College in 1982. After graduating from college, Lincoln served as a staff assistant for U.S. Representative Bill Alexander, a Democrat from Arkansas's 1st congressional district. She remained in Alexander's office until 1984. From 1985 until 1991, she worked for lobbying firms as a researcher.

In 1992 Lambert decided to challenge her old boss, Representative Alexander, for the Democratic nomination in his rural northeast Arkansas district. Prevailing in the primary, she won the general election with 70 percent of the vote. In 1994, following her marriage to pediatrician Steve Lincoln, she was re-elected to a second term. When incumbent Senator Dale Bumpers announced his retirement in 1998, Lincoln jumped into the race, winning the Democratic nomination in a four-way primary to succeed him; she won the election with 55 percent of the vote. In 2004 Lincoln was re-elected with 56 percent of the vote.

With the Obama Administration having become hugely unpopular in her home state, Lincoln's re-election strategy in 2010 was to depict herself to Arkansas voters as 'independent' of the Democrats. After first narrowly surviving a primary challenge by the state's then-Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter with an early endorsement from former President and Governor of Arkansas Bill Clinton, Lincoln lost in November 2010 to Republican Congressman John Boozman in a landslide.

Lincoln remained in Washington after her re-election loss in November 2010, working as Special Policy Advisor at the firm of Alston & Bird. In 2011 Lincoln became chair of Small Business for Sensible Regulations, a project of the National Federation of Independent Business. In July 2013, Lincoln founded her own political consulting firm called Lincoln Policy Group.