Ayotte, Kelly, 1968-

<p>Kelly Ann Ayotte (/ˈeɪɒt/ AY-ott; born June 27, 1968) is an American attorney and politician who served as a United States Senator from 2011 to 2017 and Attorney General for New Hampshire from 2004 to 2009.</p>

<p>Born and raised in Nashua, New Hampshire, Ayotte is a graduate of Nashua High School, Pennsylvania State University and Villanova University School of Law. She worked as a law clerk for the New Hampshire Supreme Court before entering private practice. She also worked as a prosecutor for the New Hampshire Department of Justice, and briefly served as the legal counsel to New Hampshire Governor Craig Benson, before returning to the Department of Justice to serve as Deputy Attorney General of New Hampshire.</p>

<p>In June 2004, Governor Benson appointed Ayotte as Attorney General of New Hampshire, after the resignation of Peter Heed. She became the first and only woman to serve as New Hampshire's Attorney General, serving from 2004 to 2009, after she was twice reappointed by Democratic governor John Lynch. In July 2009, Ayotte resigned as Attorney General to pursue a bid for the U.S. Senate, after three-term incumbent Judd Gregg announced his retirement from the Senate.</p>

<p>In September 2010, Ayotte won a close victory over lawyer Ovide M. Lamontagne in the Republican primary for the U.S. Senate. She then defeated Democratic congressman Paul Hodes in the general election with 60% of the vote and was sworn into the U.S. Senate as a member of the 112th Congress on January 3, 2011. Ayotte was mentioned as a possible running mate for Republican nominee Mitt Romney in the 2012 presidential election.</p>

<p>In 2016, Ayotte was defeated in her bid for reelection by Democratic Governor Maggie Hassan by a very narrow margin of 1,017 votes (0.14%). After President Trump nominated Judge Neil Gorsuch to the United States Supreme Court, the administration chose Ayotte to lead the White House team escorting the nominee to meetings and hearings on Capitol Hill. Ayotte was chosen by Senator John McCain to deliver a Bible reading at his memorial service in Washington D.C. on September 1, 2018.</p>

<p>After a 16-year legal career in which she rose to become attorney general for the state of New Hampshire, Kelly Ayotte won election to the United States Senate as only the second female Senator in her state’s history. On Capitol Hill, Ayotte quickly made a name for herself in national security policy. As the ranking Republican and then head of the Senate Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Readiness and Management Support, she fought automatic cuts to military spending that were part of the federal government’s 2011 budget sequestration. “I’m still for making these reductions,” Ayotte said in 2012, “just not through sacrificing our national defense.”</p>

<p>Kelly Ayotte was born in Nashua, New Hampshire, on June 27, 1968, to Mark and Kathy Veracco Ayotte. She has a stepbrother and two half-brothers. Ayotte graduated from Pennsylvania State University in 1990 with a degree in political science. In college, she was a competitive skier. Ayotte attended Villanova University Law School, where she served as editor of the Villanova Environmental Law Journal and earned a JD in 1993. In 2001 she married Joseph Daley, a fighter pilot who flew missions in the Iraq War. They have two children.</p>

<p>After serving as law clerk to Justice Sherman Horton of the New Hampshire supreme court from 1993 to 1994, Ayotte moved to private practice. In 1998 she became a prosecutor in the New Hampshire attorney general’s office, rising to become head of the homicide division. In a widely covered trial, she successfully prosecuted the killers of two Dartmouth College professors in 2001. Ayotte briefly served as counsel to New Hampshire Governor Craig Benson in 2003 before he named her state deputy attorney general. In 2004 Benson appointed Ayotte the first female attorney general in New Hampshire history where, among other cases, she argued Ayotte v. Planned Parenthood of Northern New England, in which she defended the state’s recently adopted law requiring parental notification for minors to get an abortion. Following a series of defeats in the lower courts, she appealed the case to the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled that the lower courts were incorrect to strike down the entire statute as unconstitutional but avoided commenting on the broader legal challenge. In 2009 Democratic Governor John Lynch reappointed Ayotte as attorney general.</p>