Neuberger, Maurine B. (Maurine Brown), 1907-2000

<p>Maurine Brown Neuberger-Solomon, best known as Maurine Neuberger (January 9, 1907 – February 22, 2000) was an American politician who served as a United States senator for the State of Oregon from November 1960 to January 1967. She was the fourth woman elected to the United States Senate and the tenth woman to serve in the body. She and her husband, Richard L. Neuberger, are regarded as the Senate's first husband-and-wife legislative team. To date, she is the only woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Oregon.</p>

<p>Neuberger was born in Cloverdale, Tillamook County, Oregon. She attended public schools, the Oregon College of Education at Monmouth from 1922 to 1924, graduated from the University of Oregon in 1929 with a Bachelor of Arts. She was an alumna of the Delta Zeta sorority. She was selected to Mortar Board National College Senior Honor Society in her junior year. She then undertook graduate study at the University of California at Los Angeles from 1936 to 1937. Brown was a teacher in Oregon public schools between 1932 and 1944; in 1937, while teaching in a Portland high school, she met Richard L. Neuberger. The couple married in 1945, after Neuberger completed his service in World War II.</p>

<p>Maurine Neuberger entered politics herself in 1950 when she was elected a member of the State House of Representatives and served from 1950 to 1955. In 1952, when she was reelected to the state House and her husband was reelected to the state Senate, she won with more votes than her husband. During this period she was also a member of the board of directors of the American Association for the United Nations. Richard was elected to the United States Senate in 1954.</p>

<p>With her husband Richard Lewis Neuberger, Maurine B. Neuberger was part of a “mediagenic power couple” that together reformed the Oregon Democratic Party and emerged onto the national scene. After her husband’s death in 1960, Maurine Neuberger succeeded him in the U.S. Senate to become a leading advocate for consumer rights and reform and an outspoken critic of the tobacco industry.</p>

<p>Maurine Brown was born in coastal Cloverdale, Oregon, on January 9, 1907, the daughter of Walter T. Brown, a country doctor, and Ethel Kelty Brown, a schoolteacher. She had one brother, Robert. Brown graduated from Bethel High School in Polk County, Oregon, and in 1924 earned a teacher’s certificate at the Oregon College of Education in Monmouth. She taught physical education and modern dance at private and public schools before returning to college. She earned a BA in English and physical education in 1929 from the University of Oregon in Eugene. She later took graduate courses at the University of California at Los Angeles. For 12 years Maurine Brown taught public school in Oregon, before returning to the family dairy farm during World War II. While teaching in Portland in 1936 she had met Richard Neuberger, a young writer who aspired to politics. After Neuberger’s tour in the U.S. Army during World War II, the couple married on December 20, 1945. They had no children.</p>

<p>Maurine Neuberger’s political career began in 1946 when she helped her husband during his campaign as a Democratic candidate to the Oregon senate. Richard Neuberger lost the race but was elected to the state senate in 1948. Inspired by her husband’s victory, Maurine Neuberger won election to the state house of representatives in 1950, making the Neubergers the first husband and wife to serve simultaneously in both chambers of a state legislature. When the couple arrived in Salem, Richard Neuberger once told an associate there were so few Democrats that “Maurine and I can caucus in bed!” Together the Neubergers played an important role in the revival of Oregon’s Democratic Party, which previously had been overshadowed by the Republicans. Maurine Neuberger focused on consumer rights and education reform, successfully arguing for the repeal of a state ban on colored oleomargarine (she won wide notoriety for her demonstration of the process of making the product on the Oregon house floor) and initiating programs for students with special needs. She was wildly popular among Oregon voters, who often came to her husband’s campaign appearance especially to see her. Richard Neuberger once observed that his wife went further in politics than anyone else who regularly spoke their mind. In 1952 she outpolled President Dwight D. Eisenhower and, in 1954, collected more votes than anyone on the state ticket. In 1954 the Neubergers chronicled their rise in state politics in a book, Adventures in Politics: We Go to the Legislature. That same year, Richard Neuberger defeated the Republican incumbent for a U.S. Senate seat. Maurine Neuberger, who had been his chief strategist, joined him as an unpaid aide in Washington in 1955 after completing her final term in the Oregon house. Despite her husband’s ascension into national politics, when asked if she would run for the United States Congress in 1956, Maurine Neuberger replied, “One member of Congress in the family is enough. I find my duties as a wife and official hostess keep me occupied full time.”</p>