"Nannygate" is a popular term for the 1993 revelations that caused two of President Bill Clinton's choices for United States Attorney General to become derailed.

In January 1993, Clinton's nomination of corporate lawyer Zoë Baird for the position came under attack after it became known that she and her husband had broken the law by employing two illegal aliens from Peru as a nanny and chauffeur for their young child. They had also failed to pay Social Security taxes for the workers until shortly before the disclosures. While the Clinton administration thought the matter was relatively unimportant, the news elicited a firestorm of public opinion, most of it against Baird. Within eight days, her nomination lost political support in the U.S. Congress and was withdrawn.

The following month, Clinton's choice federal judge Kimba Wood for the job was leaked to the press, but within a day it became known that she too had employed an illegal alien to look after her child. Although Wood had done so at a time when this was legal, and had paid Social Security taxes for the worker, the disclosures were enough to cause the immediate withdrawal of Wood from consideration. The Clinton administration then said that the hiring practices for household help would be examined for all of the more than thousand presidential appointments under consideration, causing the whole process to slow down significantly. Determined to choose a woman for the Attorney General post, Clinton finally selected state prosecutor Janet Reno, who was confirmed and served through all eight years of the administration.

The Nannygate matter caused wealthy Americans to ask each other if they too had a "Zoë Baird problem", as the hiring of undocumented workers and the paying of household help off the books were both commonplace. Two fault lines, gender and class, were exposed in the discussion over Nannygate: in the former, a double standard was seen wherein female appointees faced a greater risk of being questioned and disqualified based upon their childcare arrangements, while in the latter, affluent professional women who could afford live-in childcare arrangements were seen as trying to get away with an illegal act. Nannygate-type controversies have subsequently affected other political appointees both in the U.S. and in other countries.

The Baird nomination[link]

President-elect Bill Clinton had vowed to assemble an administration that "looked like America", and it was widely assumed that one of the major cabinet posts would go to a woman.^[1] In particular, he wanted to nominate one for the position of United States Attorney General, something women's political action groups were also requesting.^[1][2][3][4] No woman had previously served in this post.^[5] His choice, whose nomination was announced on December 24, 1992, was Zoë Baird, a 40-year-old senior vice president and general counsel at Aetna Life and Casualty Company who had previously worked in the Justice Department during the Carter administration.^[5]

Little known before the nomination (Clinton had not met her until their interview),^[6] Baird was a skilled networker who had been the protégé of several powerful Washington insiders, including Clinton transition team leader Warren Christopher and once-and-future White House Counsel Lloyd Cutler.^[7][8][9] Picking Baird gave Clinton the ability to satisfy the women's groups' desires while still showing independence by not choosing one of their preferred selections.^[3] Despite the lack of familiarity and getting a lukewarm response from some Clinton backers – those in the legal public interest community said "Zoë who?"^[10] and her corporate sympathies discouraged liberals^[11] – Baird was expected to gain confirmation in the U.S. Senate.^[2] Baird and her husband, Yale Law School professor Paul Gewirtz, had a three-year-old son.^[5][12]

On January 14, 1993, a page-one story in The New York Times broke the news^[10] that Baird had hired a married pair of illegal aliens from Peru, Lillian and Victor Cordero, between 1990 and 1992.^[11][13] The Peruvian woman served as the nanny for Baird's son and the Peruvian man as a part-time driver.^[13] Furthermore, Baird had not paid Social Security taxes for the couple, until making a lump-sum payment earlier in January 1993.^[13] Baird had brought forward this information willingly to transition officials and authorities performing background checks; she said that she had thought that the fact that they were sponsoring the couple for citizenship made the hiring acceptable, and that they could not pay the taxes for people who were not yet in the country legally.^[13][14] (Baird's immigration lawyer would dispute some aspects of exactly when the sponsorship request took place.^[10])

This was the first time a presidential cabinet nominee had faced such an issue.^[9] While the Clinton transition team had found out about the matter during their vetting of Baird, they had underestimated the seriousness of its impact.^[15] Their attitude about Baird's infraction was that it was a technical violation and that 'Everybody does it'.^[10] Clinton operatives initially thought the Baird revelation would was no big deal and would quickly lose the attention of the media and public.^[7]

Employment of illegal aliens was not uncommon at the time, but in Baird's case it was especially bad public relations, since the Attorney General was in charge of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS).^[16] Baird's wealth – she made $500,000 a year in her job and together with her husband had a combined income of $600,000 – made her, in the context of the early 1990s recession, an unsympathetic figure to not be paying taxes.^[10][17] Moreover, Baird and Gewirtz had been wealthy enough to afford legal child care, but instead had paid the Corderos $250 a week plus board, well below minimum wage.^[18] The news brought about an immediate and large-scale negative reaction.^[19] As Guardian U.S. correspondent Martin Walker later wrote, "[Baird and Gewirtz] were the overpaid yuppies and ubiquitous lawyers whom American voters had come to resent."^[20]

On January 16, Baird paid $2,900 in fines for the infractions to the INS.^[21] This was on top of the $8,000 in back Social Security taxes she had paid earlier.^[21] George Stephanopoulos, the transition communications directory, said that "President-elect Clinton has complete confidence in Zoë Baird."^[21]

Some in the Clinton inner circle persisted in believing that Baird's offense was akin to a traffic ticket in seriousness, but Democratic senators told them otherwise; Senate Judiciary Committee chair Joe Biden of Delaware likened it more to a "freeway crash".^[19] Baird met with Biden twice, both times leaving his office in tears, although Biden publicly stated that he did not think the matter would prevent her nomination.^[10] Baird actually had more immediate support from ranking member Orrin Hatch, who called it "no big deal".^[11] This reflected a considerable degree of Republican support for Baird, as they decided she was more in tune with their stance on some issues than a replacement would likely be.^[10][22]

Appearing before the Judiciary Committee on January 19, Baird apologized for having knowingly broken the law: "In my hope to find appropriate child care for my son, I gave too little emphasis to what was described to me as a technical violation of law."^[22] She added that, "People are fairly questioning if there are classes of individuals who hold themselves above the law. I do not."^[22] Baird's statement that her husband had handled many of the legal issues surrounding the Corderos' employment drew little support for her.^[23] Overall, the questioning of Baird was tougher from Democrats on the committee than Republicans, again reflecting the latter's support for Baird.^[22] At the close of the initial testimony, Baird's confirmation still seemed quite possible.^[22]

As the inauguration of Bill Clinton took place on January 20, the nomination crisis was reaching its final phase, with Biden telling Clinton at a luncheon following the ceremony that the next day or two would be crucial.^[9] But political and public opposition continued to mount.^[3] Calls opposing the nomination flooded the switchboards of members of Congress.^[10][11][17] Senator David Boren of Oklahoma reported getting a thousand calls to his office, with 80 percent of them against the nomination.^[3] Senator Paul Simon of Illinois also received a thousand calls.^[10] Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont said, "In 18 years in the Senate, I had never seen so many telephone calls, spontaneously, in such a short period."^[10] Television crews staked out the New Haven home of Baird.^[17] As one top Senate official later stated, "There were phone calls to offices, local editorials. The people were just way ahead of us."^[10] The issue created a firestorm on conservative talk radio,^[24] then emerging as a potent force in American politics. Talker Rush Limbaugh was especially involved in the issue, for instance weighing in to say that Baird's "blame-it-on-the-husband" defense was a "feminazi" ploy.^[23] A USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll showed that 63 percent of the American public did not think Baird should be confirmed;^[25] the reaction was broad, with majorities of Republicans and Democrats, men and women, and young and old all opposing it.^[26]

Clinton faced a choice of either quickly jettisoning her, and risk appearing weak, or defiantly continuing to back her, and opposing a popular groundswell; he opted to wait and see a little more.^[27] There was also much confusion about when exactly Clinton had learned of the Baird problem,^[10] with Christopher saying he had informed Clinton of it in some manner during the transition and Clinton saying he had not.^[27] This led to a "What did the President know and when did he know it" grilling of Stephanopoulos on January 21 during his first news conference as White House Communications Director.^[9][24] The treatment of Stephanopoulos got rough and his evasive answers bordered on nonsense.^[27][28]

A second round of Judiciary Committee hearings were also taking place on January 21, and by then, Baird was politically isolated, with no major groups coming to her defense.^[10] A growing number of senators came out in opposition to Baird during the day, including two Republican members of the Judiciary Committee and influential centrist Democrats John Breaux of Louisiana and David Boren of Oklahoma.^[3] Baird gamely continued to smile and testify well into the evening, but as Stephanopoulos later wrote, "She didn't know it yet, but she was toast."^[28] Biden called Clinton and told him the nomination was lost.^[10]

On January 22, 1993, two days after Clinton had assumed the presidency, the White House announced in the middle of the night the withdrawal of Baird's nomination.^[3][10]

Clinton now publicly stated that he had been informed of Baird's hiring of the illegal aliens after discussing the position with her but before actually nominating her.^[10][29] He had not halted to process to gain all information but rather had erred by going through with the nomination in order to meet a self-imposed Christmas deadline for naming his cabinet.^[29] On January 23, Anna Quindlen used the term "Nannygate" in her syndicated column^[30] and it soon gained wide-scale use.^[19]

While Lillian and Victor Cordero had done their jobs well (before hiring them, Baird had made several attempts to employ U.S. citizens, but none had worked out),^[7] on January 22 the INS said it sought to question them and very likely deport them.^[12][31] The couple had previously separated and were about to be divorced.^[32] Lillian Cordero agreed to leave the country and return to Peru, under a 30-day "voluntary departure" program.^[32] Victor Cordero first went into hiding, hoping to stay in the country; his lawyer said he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time and that, "He doesn't understand why he's being singled out."^[12][31] But by January 29, he too had voluntarily left the U.S. for Peru.^[32] Neither of them ever appeared in the media.^[33] Although illegal domestics were rarely deported unless they had been involved in crimes,^[12] the INS maintained that the couple were treated no differently than any other illegal aliens who were brought to their attention.^[32]

The Wood near-nomination[link]

On February 4, 1993, the Clinton White House made it known via deliberate background statements to several major newspapers that 49-year-old United States federal judge Kimba Wood of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York would be his new choice for Attorney General.^[34][35] However, no official announcement or nomination was being made, pending the completion of background checks and to gauge reaction to the pick.^[34][36] White House officials indicated that First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton had insisted that the position still be filled by a woman.^[34] Wood, who was prominent in New York social circles,^[37] was married to Time magazine writer Michael Kramer and the couple had a six-year-old son.^[34]

However, later that day, investigations by the office of the White House Counsel and the FBI background check were completed, and Clinton and the White House learned that she had employed an illegal immigrant to look after her son, even though she had done it when it was still legal to do so.^[38] The immigrant, from Trinidad, had been hired in March 1986, several months before enactment of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 made hiring of illegal aliens unlawful.^[38][39] The nanny obtained legal status in December 1987, and overall worked for Wood for seven years.^[38]

Clinton decided the nomination could not go forward, and the next day, February 5, Wood publicly withdrew herself from consideration.^[35][38]

The case was different from the Baird one in that Wood had not broken immigration law and had paid Social Security taxes for the person.^[4][40] Nevertheless, the White House feared reaction from Congressional and the public, as well as that from radio and television talk shows, in the apparent, if not actual, repetition of the Baird controversy, and asked Wood to withdraw.^[38][40][41] A further burden was the disclosure that while she was a student in London, Wood had trained for five days as a Playboy bunny.^[38] The White House was annoyed with Wood, because they said that when they had initially asked her if she had a "Zoë Baird problem", she had responded in the negatory.^[38] Allies of Wood gave a starkly different account and said that she had been fully forthcoming about the details of her dealings with the immigrant.^[40] According to a Gallup Poll, 65 percent of the American public did not think Wood should have been forced down.^[42]

Other Clinton appointees[link]

One of the few men to make the short list for the Attorney General selection, Washington lawyer Charles Ruff, was ruled out of consideration by the White House on February 6, because he had not paid Social Security taxes for years for a woman who cleaned his house.^[4]

On February 8, Stephanopoulos broadened the scope of the affair by announcing that the past hiring of an illegal alien would "probably be disqualifying" for applicants to any of the 1,100 presidential appointments that were subject to confirmation by the Senate.^[4][43] As one White House official said, "If you ever knowingly hired an illegal alien, that's a killer. If you hired someone who was legal but didn't pay Social Security taxes, you're probably O.K., but only if you come clean and pay the back taxes."^[4]

Several Clinton appointees then came forward. Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown said he had failed to pay the taxes for a maid.^[4] The Brown case attracted a fair amount of attention, with 40 percent of Americas thinking he should step down as a result^[42] (he did not). Secretary of Transportation Federico Peña said he would pay back taxes owed for a part-time babysitter.^[4] Other appointees said they had examined their records and were clean.^[4] Stephanopoulos himself came under attention, but said the cleaner he had hired was from a cleaning company.^[4] The matter resulted in a slowdown of hiring for all positions, in what Secretary of Defense Les Aspin called a "chilling effect".^[19] One-third of the nominations for the U.S. State Department were held up while being examined for the question.^[4]

Some other female Clinton cabinet-level appointees escaped Nannygate by virtue of their personal circumstances. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala was unmarried with no children, while Secretary of Energy Hazel O'Leary and Ambassador to the United Nations Madeleine Albright had children that were grown.^[43] Carol Browner, Clinton's pick for Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency and someone who did have a young child, avoided Nannygate problems by simply never having used a nanny.^[44]

The Reno nomination[link]

On February 11, 1993, Janet Reno was nominated for the post.^[45] Clinton had known of her since her days with the groundbreaking Miami Drug Court, where as state attorney she had worked with public defender and Clinton brother-in-law Hugh Rodham,^[46] but otherwise although qualified for the job had no federal experience and was relatively obscure.^[43][45] Reno was 54 years old, had never married and had no children, and, as Clinton later wrote, "Public service was her life."^[46] Without the chance of a nanny problem, and with her mowing her own lawn reducing the chances for an immigrant problem, Reno was the perfect choice after the Baird and Wood failures.^[43] In addition, Reno's down-to-earth image contrasted with the wealthy corporate lawyer Baird and the socially prominent Wood.^[37] (Reno would instead face something often experienced by unmarried woman of her age, speculation about her sexual orientation.^[47])

In making the announcement, Clinton said that he had considered men for the post and that "I never felt hamstrung by any commitment, even though I did want to name a woman Attorney General."^[45] When asked how he would have handled the selection were he to do it all over again, Clinton responded, "I would have called Janet Reno on November 5th."^[37]

Reno was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on March 11, 1993, and thus became the first female Attorney General.^[48]

Reno remained Attorney General through both of Clinton's terms as president. Wood remained a federal judge. While the ramifications of Nannygate persisted, Baird herself quickly returned to public obscurity.^[49] Clinton subsequently appointed Baird to the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and in his 2004 memoir reiterated that the fault for the failed nomination had been his, not hers.^[50] Baird hired an American citizen to be her next nanny.^[10]

Political and cultural impact[link]

The Nannygate matter did some damage to the Clinton administration politically. A cover of Time magazine, featuring a half-portrait of Baird, was titled "Clinton's First Blunder" and subtitled "How a popular outcry caught the Washington elite by surprise".^[51] The Baird nomination was emblematic of other difficulties Clinton had during the transition period and his early days in office, including most prominently the dropping of a promised middle-class tax cut and resistance to his proposal to allow gays in the military.^{[19][52][53][54]} Stephanopoulos later wrote that "We should have never let the Baird nomination get as far as it did, but our systems failed us at every crucial step."^[1] And the timing of the announcement of the Wood withdrawal detracted attention from the signing of the Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993, the first legislative achievement of the Clinton administration.^[35][55] While a Gallup Poll showed that only 22 percent of the public said that Clinton's difficulties in naming someone for Attorney General decreased their confidence in his ability to lead the country,^[42] overall, Clinton experienced the highest disapproval ratings at the start of any presidency since such polling began.^[20][56] His "presidential honeymoon" period was thus extremely brief.^[53]

Clinton's desire to appoint a woman to the post engendered some criticism for devaluing the position to an affirmative action post,^[10] and Stephanopoulos later conceded that "we put ourselves in a box".^[1] The failure of the Baird and Wood picks, along with Lani Guinier's failed nomination (for unrelated reasons) to Assistant Attorney General for Department of Justice Civil Rights Division a few months later, made Congressional Democrats cautious in endorsing future Clinton personnel choices.^[57] When federal judge Stephen Breyer was first considered for a U.S. Supreme Court vacancy in mid-1993, he was not selected, in part because he too had a 'Zoë Baird problem'^[57][58] (he would be nominated and confirmed the following year, following another vacancy).

The Baird case became the first national scandal over child-care arrangements,^[59] but the situation that these nominees faced was in part at least a common one to Americans. Two-thirds of American women with school-age children were in the workforce and three-fifths of married men with children had working wives.^[43] They all needed some form of day care, and with there being no organized or subsidized day care system in the U.S., many families turned to arrangements within the underground economy.^[43] That this administration ran into this problem was considered ironic, given that Bill and Hillary Clinton were the first dual-career couple to occupy the White House.^[43]

Once the Nannygate matter broke into the news, the question "Do you have a Zoë Baird problem?" became frequently asked by Americans of each other in casual conversation, with many answers being in the affirmative.^[43] U.S. Census Bureau and Internal Revenue Service data indicated that only one-quarter of people who employed household help paid Social Security taxes to the workers, and that even figure may have been higher than the real one due to people not responding to surveys honestly.^[4][43] Most of those doing the hiring did not think about breaking the law or getting caught.^[31] Meanwhile, Baird had graduated within a matter of hours from anonymity to dubious icon.^[7] One employment agency head who only hired legal household workers said, "You have no idea, the frustration, sitting here, knocking your head against the wall, trying to do what's right. And then you have a Zoë Baird who exposes the fact that everybody else is breaking the law."^[31] The phrase "to have a Zoë Baird problem" became rooted in the vocabulary of the American professional and political classes.^[60][61]

The matter exposed the practices of the barely underground economy of wealthy households and largely illegal immigrant suppliers.^[31] The owner of one Manhattan nanny agency stated, "It's just a reality of life that without the illegal girls, there wouldn't be any nannies, and the mommies would have to stay home and mind their own kids."^[31] The practice had grown as both married women with children and single working mothers entered the workforce in large numbers during the 1980s, with the extended hours and long commutes of many professional positions further exacerbating it.^[31][62] The Irish and Central and South American immigrant population of domestic workers was augmented by those from the Philippines, China, Ireland, or Poland.^[31] People hiring nannies often preferred illegal aliens, who were thought to be easier to find, considerably less expensive, and more loyal if they worked out and easier to fire if they did not.^[31][63] As one Floral Park, Queens, woman said, "I want someone who cannot leave the country, who doesn't know anyone in New York, who basically does not have a life. I want someone who is completely dependent on me and loyal to my family."^[31] Americans themselves were largely unwilling to do the jobs.^[31]

While some men were affected by Nannygate, most of the public commentary revolved around its effect on women.^[64] The February 10, 1993, op-ed page of The New York Times, which carried considerable Nannygate coverage in general, was exclusively devoted towards discussing it as a women's issue.^[64] The press themselves came in for some criticism in this respect, with the group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting complaining that the Times and other media outlets focused on the effect of Nannygate on white, upper-middle-class women, and excluded the perspective of the actual immigrant childcare workers.^[64] Stuart Taylor, Jr., in his March 1993 piece "Inside the Whirlwind: How Zoë Baird Was Monstrously Caricatured for the Smallest of Sins, Pounded by Press and Popular Righteousness, and Crucified by Prejudice and Hypocrisy" for The American Lawyer, concluded that Baird was done in by a political-media culture bent on populism and symbolic blood sport and that she was penalized for being honest.^[65] He also said Baird had fallen victim to "the cold, capricious cruelty of fate".^[65]

Two fault lines, gender and class, were exposed in the debate over Nannygate: in the former, a double standard was seen wherein female appointees faced a greater risk of being questioned and disqualified based upon their childcare arrangements, while in the latter, wealthy or upper middle-class professional women who could afford live-in childcare arrangements were seen as trying to get away a white-collar criminal act.^[41] In particular, the competing gendered narratives revolved around whether the affluent Baird was considered "one of us" by women.^[66] Baird failed to gain support from some feminists, who believed that as a protégé of powerful Washington insiders, she had not paid her feminist dues.^[8] University of Michigan scholar Diane Sampson, publishing in a collection entitled "Bad" Mothers: The politics of blame in twentieth-century America, saw Baird as trying to establish motherhood as a 'site' in elaborating her qualifications for Attorney General during her confirmation hearings, an effort that was subverted by her affluence and her earning far more than her husband did.^[67] Sampson concluded that "The dissonance between Baird's rhetorical stance and her lived life was jarring" and that her case presented "culturally accepted signifiers of a bad mother".^[67]

A modified and fictionalized account of the Baird nomination formed the core of Wendy Wasserstein's 1996 play An American Daughter, which was later made into a 2000 television film.^[65] Wasserstein saw the episode, as well as what happened to Wood, as an example of double standards and sexism, and used it as a vehicle to explore the nature and status of American feminism as of the 1990s.^[65][68] She said of its role in illustrating feminist issues, "I mean, if Nannygate hadn't existed, what a great thing to make up as a way of talking about it."^[68] An American Daughter became one of Wasserstein's most ambitious works, and also her most political.^[68]

Mary Romero, Professor of Justice Studies at Arizona State University, discussed the class aspect in a new 2002 edition of her classic work Maid in the U.S.A.. She saw Nannygate as a follow-on to the long-running "servant problem", and illustrated how labor and immigration laws were still structured so as to benefit employers rather than employees.^[59] Taunya Lovell Banks, Professor of Equality Jurisprudence at University of Maryland School of Law, saw Nannygate as also having a racial dimension, in that it illustrated how the professional class exploited domestic workers of color.^[66]

In the wake of Nannygate, effective 1995 Congress changed the way taxes for household help are filed, creating a Form 1040 Schedule H that shifting the federal reporting burden from separate documents onto the main return for income taxes.^[69] (The new regulations still were more focused on employers than domestic employees.^[66]) The full procedure for handling payments of Social Security and Medicare taxes, as well as state and federal unemployment insurance premiums, for household and child-care help remained quite complex, however, and over the following two decades, self-help articles were published with titles such as "How to Avoid Your Very Own Nannygate"^[70] and "Time to Come Clean"^[71] and with admonitions like "we all know what happened to Kimba Wood and Zoë Baird."^[72]

Later instances[link]

Later instances of political problems caused by the hiring of nannies that were in some way illegal have also been dubbed "Nannygate", both in the U.S. and outside it.

In 2001, President George W. Bush nominated Linda Chavez for Secretary of Labor. She was the first Hispanic woman nominated to a United States cabinet position. However, she withdrew from consideration after it was revealed that she had given money to a one-time illegal immigrant from Guatemala who lived in her home more than a decade earlier.^[73] Chavez's claims that she had been engaged in an act of charity and compassion rather than employment, and that she was now the victim of the "politics of personal destruction", were not enough to save her nomination.^[61][74] The Chavez case did further illustrate the question of the status of female illegal aliens in households across the nation.^[62]

In December 2004, Bernard Kerik was nominated by President Bush to succeed Tom Ridge as United States Secretary of Homeland Security. After a week of press scrutiny, Kerik withdrew his nomination, saying that he had unknowingly hired an undocumented worker and had not paid her taxes.^[75] The Times wrote that "the curse of Nannygate" had returned to claim a fourth high-level victim.^[75] As Jim Gibbons was campaigning for Governor of Nevada in 2006, it was brought to light that more than ten years earlier, he and his wife Dawn Gibbons had employed an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper and babysitter.^[76] Gibbons went on to win the election anyway. By 2009 and the stepping down of Nancy Killefer as nominee for Chief Performance Officer of the United States at the beginning of the Obama administration, at least ten top-level cabinet or other federal appointees had run into trouble over failure to pay the "nanny tax".^[77] Despite the possible peril it brought, most Americans were still paying their nannies off the books.^[78] The problem recurred in the 2010 California gubernatorial election, where candidate Meg Whitman lost despite spending over $140 million of her own money.^[79][80] Her campaign was seriously damaged during its final two months by the revelation that she had employed an illegal immigrant as a nanny and housekeeper, and by the alleged manner in which she treated (and fired) the housekeeper.^[79][80]

David Blunkett, a British politician, ran into political trouble for fast tracking a visa application for his family's nanny in 2004.^[81] In 2006, the Minister affair at the announcement of the Reinfeldt cabinet in Sweden included the quick resignations of Maria Borelius, a Swedish trade minister who had hired a live-in nanny without paying taxes, and Cecilia Stegö Chilò, the Swedish culture minister, who also hired a live-in nanny without paying taxes. The matter was widely reported by the international press, with the Financial Times dubbing it "Nannygate".^[82]

Bibliography[link]

• Balakian, Jan (2010). Reading the Plays of Wendy Wasserstein. Milwaukee: Applause Theatre and Cinema Books. ISBN 1-55783-725-2. 
• Burke, John P. (2000). Presidential Transitions: From Politics to Practice. Boulder, Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers. ISBN 1-55587-916-0. 
• Ciociola, Gail (2005). Wendy Wasserstein: Dramatizing Women, Their Choices and Their Boundaries (Reprint of 1998 ed.). Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. ISBN 0-7864-2317-X. 
• Clinton, Bill (2004). My Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-375-41457-6. 
• Harris, John F. (2005). The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-375-50847-3. 
• Romero, Mary (2002). Maid in the U.S.A. (2nd ed.). New York: Routledge. ISBN 0-415-93541-5. 
• Sampson, Diane (1997). "Rejecting Zoe Baird: Class Resentment and the Working Mother". In Ladd-Taylor, Molly; Umansky, Lauri. "Bad" Mothers: The Politics of Blame in Twentieth-century America. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-5119-9. 
• Stephanopoulos, George (1999). All Too Human: A Political Education. Boston: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-92919-0. 
• Walker, Martin (1996). The President We Deserve: Bill Clinton: His Rise, Falls, and Comebacks. New York: Crown Publishers. ISBN [[Special:BookSources/1-5175-9871-X|1-5175-9871-X]]. 

References[link]

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Meg Whitman
Whitman speaks at the Tech Museum in San Jose, CA, February 17, 2009
Born	Margaret Cushing Whitman (1956-08-04) August 4, 1956 (age 55) Cold Spring Harbor (Long Island), New York, U.S.[1]
Residence	Atherton, California, U.S.
Alma mater	Princeton University (A.B.) Harvard Business School (M.B.A.)
Occupation	President and CEO of Hewlett-Packard
Political party	Republican
Religion	Presbyterian[2]
Spouse	Griffith Rutherford Harsh IV

Margaret Cushing "Meg" Whitman (born August 4, 1956) is an American business executive. She is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett-Packard.^[3] A native of Long Island, New York, she is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School. Whitman served as an executive in The Walt Disney Company where she was vice president of strategic planning throughout the 1980s. In the 1990s, she served as an executive for Procter & Gamble and Hasbro. Whitman served as President and Chief Executive Officer of eBay from 1998 to 2008. During her ten years with the company, she oversaw expansion from 30 employees and $4 million in annual revenue to more than 15,000 employees and $8 billion in annual revenue.

In February 2009, Whitman announced her candidacy for Governor of California, becoming the third woman in a twenty year period to run for the office. She won the Republican primary in June 2010. The fourth wealthiest woman in the state of California with a net worth of $1.3 billion in 2010,^[4] she spent more of her own money on the race than any other political candidate spent on a single election in American history,^[5][6] spending $144 million total of her own fortune and $178.5 million including donors.^[7] Whitman lost to Jerry Brown in the November 2 election.^[8]

Early life and education[link]

Whitman was born in Long Island, New York, the daughter of Margaret Cushing (née Goodhue) and Hendricks Hallett Whitman, Jr.^[9][10][11] Her patrilineal great-great-great-grandfather, Elnathan Whitman, was a member of the Nova Scotia House of Assembly. Through her father, she is also a great-great-granddaughter of U.S. Senator Charles B. Farwell, of Illinois.^[12] On her mother's side, she is a great-granddaughter of historian and jurist Munroe Smith and a great-great-granddaughter of general Henry S. Huidekoper.^[12] Her paternal grandmother, born Adeladie Chatfield-Taylor, was the sister of economist Wayne Chatfield-Taylor.^[12]

Whitman attended Cold Spring Harbor High School in Cold Spring Harbor, New York, graduating after three years in 1974. In her memoirs, she says she was in the top ten of her class.^[13] She had wanted to be a doctor, so she studied math and science at Princeton University.^[14] However, after spending a summer selling advertisements for a magazine, she switched to studying economics,^[15] earning a B.A. with honors in 1977. Whitman then obtained an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School in 1979.^[16][17]

Whitman is married to Griffith Harsh IV, a neurosurgeon at Stanford University Medical Center.^[18] They have two sons. She has lived in Atherton, California, since March 1998. Whitman College, a residential college completed in 2007 at Princeton University, is named after Meg Whitman following her $30 million donation.

Career[link]

Early work[link]

Beginning her career in 1979 as a brand manager at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati, Ohio, Whitman later moved on to work as a consultant at Bain & Company's San Francisco office. She then rose through the ranks to achieve the position of senior Vice President.^[19]

Whitman became vice president of strategic planning at The Walt Disney Company in 1989. Two years later she joined the Stride Rite Corporation, before becoming president and CEO of Florists' Transworld Delivery in 1995.^[20]

As Hasbro's Playskool Division General Manager, she oversaw global management and marketing of two children's brands, Playskool and Mr. Potato Head starting in January 1997. She also imported the UK's children's television show Teletubbies into the U.S.^[21]

eBay[link]

Whitman joined eBay on March 1998, when it had 30 employees^[22] and revenues of approximately $4 million. During her time as CEO, the company grew to approximately 15,000 employees and $8 billion in annual revenue by 2008.^[23] Originally, when Whitman had joined eBay, she found the website as a simple black and white webpage with courier font. On her first day, the site crashed for eight hours.^[24] She believed the site to be confusing and began by building a new executive team.^[21] Whitman organized the company by splitting it into twenty-three business categories. She then assigned executives to each, including some 35,000 subcategories.^[25] In 2004, Whitman made several key changes in her management team. Jeff Gordon took over PayPal, Matt Bannick took control of international operations and Bill Cobb was placed in control of U.S. operations,^[26] which has the colorful U.S. logo, while each international site has unique branding.^[27]

eBay's logo.

Shortly after taking the company public, Whitman told how stock for the company would rise 80 points and fall 50 points in a single day. Soon after, Whitman received a call at her eBay office from Arthur Levitt, Jr., Chairman of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). She called in her general counsel and the two sat down and answered the line on speaker phone. Instead of any perceived negative reaction to stock volatility, Levitt was calling to ask about the company going public and was concerned about whether the SEC was customer-friendly. He also discussed his interest in collectible Depression era glass, post 1929.^[28]

During Whitman's tenure as CEO, eBay completed the purchase of Skype for $4.1B in cash and stock in September 2005.^[29] In 2009, Skype was sold by eBay at a valuation of $2.75B.^[30] In 2011, Skype was bought by Microsoft for US$8.5B.^[31]

In June 2007, while preparing for an interview with Reuters, Whitman allegedly shoved her subordinate, communications employee Young Mi Kim. Of the incident, Whitman related, "In any high-pressure working environment, tensions can surface." Kim also stated, "Yes, we had an unfortunate incident, but we resolved it in a way that speaks well for her and for eBay." The matter was resolved after a $200,000 settlement.^[32][33]

Whitman resigned as CEO of eBay in November 2007, but remained on the board and served as an advisor to new CEO John Donahoe until late 2008. She was inducted into the U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 2008. "I've said for some time that 10 years is roughly the right time to stay at the helm at a company like ours", she said in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, adding that "it's time for new leadership, a new perspective and a new vision."^[34]

Whitman has received numerous awards and accolades for her work at eBay. On more than one occasion, she was named among the top five most powerful women by Fortune magazine.^[35] Harvard Business Review named her the eighth-best-performing CEO of the past decade^[36] and the Financial Times named her as one of the 50 faces that shaped the decade.^[37]

Boards[link]

Whitman also served on the board of directors of the eBay Foundation, Procter & Gamble and DreamWorks SKG, until early 2009.^[16][38] She was appointed to the board of Goldman Sachs in October 2001 and then resigned in December 2002, amidst controversy that she had received shares in several public offerings managed by Goldman Sachs^[39][40][41] (see Ties to Goldman Sachs for further detail). In March 2011, she was appointed a part-time special adviser at venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.^[42]

She has also joined the boards of Zipcar^[43] and Teach For America, and re-joined the board of Procter & Gamble.^{[citation needed]}

Hewlett-Packard[link]

In January 2011, Whitman joined Hewlett-Packard's board of directors.^[44] She was named CEO on September 22, 2011.^[3] As well as renewing focus on HP’s Research & Development division, Whitman’s major decision during her first year as CEO has been to retain and recommit the firm to the PC business that her predecessor announced he was considering discarding. ^[45][46]

Charitable foundation[link]

Whitman founded a charitable foundation with husband Harsh on December 21, 2006, by donating to it 300,000 shares of eBay stock worth $9.4 million.^[47] By the end of its first year of operation, the Griffith R. Harsh IV and Margaret C Whitman Charitable Foundation had $46 million in assets and has disbursed $125,000 to charitable causes. Most of the money disbursed went to the Environmental Defense Fund.^[48] In 2010, Warren Buffett asked Whitman to join the Giving Pledge in which billionaires would commit to donate half of their money to charity, and Whitman declined and said that she is committed to working with her foundation.^{[clarification needed][49]}

Political positions[link]

Whitman was a supporter of former Bain Capital founder and Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney's presidential campaign^[50] in 2008 and was on his National Finance Team.^[51] She was also listed as Finance co-chair of Romney's exploratory committee.^[52] However, after Romney stepped out of the race and endorsed McCain, Whitman joined McCain's presidential campaign as a national co-chair.^[53] McCain mentioned Whitman as a possible Secretary of the Treasury during the second presidential debate in 2008.^[54]

While running for governor, Whitman emphasized three major areas: job creation, reduced state government spending, and reform of the state's K-12 educational system. She argued that it is best to start only a few things and finish them, instead of starting a lot of things and finishing few of them.^[55]

Education[link]

In mid 2010, Whitman launched a Spanish-language television ad during the World Cup soccer games.^[56] One advertisement is quoted by the Los Angeles Times, stating that "the Latino kids attending public schools in California today will be tomorrow's doctors, engineers, businessmen, and teachers."^[57]

Environment[link]

Whitman said that if elected, on her first day^[58] she would have suspended AB 32, the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, for a year to study its potential economic implications.^[59] AB32 requires the state to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 percent by 2020.^[60] At the state GOP Convention in March 2010, Whitman described California Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's climate change bill as a "job-killer".^[61] Whitman opposed Proposition 23, which would delay the global warming law AB32 until California's unemployment falls to 5.5 percent and stays there for a year, stating that the proposition did not reasonably balance the need to protect jobs with the need to preserve environment.^[60]

On water issues, Whitman opposed further restrictions on water supply in the Central Valley and suggested President Obama should overturn a federal judge's ruling under provisions in the Endangered Species Act which reduced water supplies another 5% to 7%.^[62]

Illegal immigration[link]

Whitman said that Arizona's approach to illegal immigration with Arizona SB 1070 is wrong and that there are better ways to solve the problem.^[63] She said that, if she had lived in California in 1994, she would have voted against Proposition 187 concerning illegal immigrants.^[64] In an op-ed during her gubernatorial campaign, Whitman wrote, "Clearly, when examining our positions on immigration, there is very little over which Jerry Brown and I disagree".^[65]

She stated that illegal immigrant students should be prohibited from attending state-funded institutions of higher education.^[66][67] Currently, California state law permits this.^[68] In 2009, Whitman called for "a path to legalization" of illegal immigrants.^[64] In a 2010 interview on television station KTLA, Whitman said, "I want to hold employers accountable for hiring only documented workers."^[69]

Marriage, abortion, marijuana[link]

Whitman supported California's Proposition 8 in 2008, which reversed In re Marriage Cases and defined marriage as a union between one man and one woman in the state, but she is for civil unions and supports California's domestic partnership laws. Whitman believes that the same-sex marriages that took place before the ban should be recognized, and that gay and lesbian couples should be permitted to adopt children.^[70] Whitman has criticized Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Jerry Brown for not defending Proposition 8 in the federal judicial system.^[71]

Whitman supports abortion rights.^[72]

Whitman has said that the legalization of marijuana is not what any law enforcement person would suggest for any reason and that "this is the worst idea [she has] ever seen."^[73]

Infrastructure[link]

Whitman does not support the proposed and partially voter-funded California High-Speed Rail project. In a letter to the Sacramento Bee^[74] Whitman's spokeswoman Sarah Pompei said: "Meg believes the state cannot afford the costs associated with high-speed rail due to our current fiscal crisis." Her opponent Jerry Brown is in favor of the project.

Whitman has made monetary donations to various candidates and PACs. While these have gone to both Republicans and Democrats, the donations are weighted to Republicans.^[75] Though Whitman has contributed to a few Democrats, including Senator Barbara Boxer; donating $4,000 to her campaign and serving on the "Friends of Boxer" committee in 2004, she donated more than $225,000.00 during the same period to Republicans, eBay's PAC and to Americans for a Republican Majority, the PAC of former Rep. Tom DeLay.^[76][77]

2010 campaign for California Governor[link]

Whitman's campaign sign for Governor of California

On February 10, 2009, Whitman announced she would run for governor of California in the 2010 election.^[78] Her campaign was largely self-funded. She spent more of her own money on this effort than any other self-funded political candidate in U.S. history^[6] and ultimately lost to Jerry Brown.

According to final reports, Whitman spent $144 million from her own personal funds.^[79] The Daily Caller said that her "penchant for throwing money around is well known in California political circles".^[80] The comment came in connection with the disclosure that her campaign had paid far above market rates for advertising on a conservative political blog. The blog's founder, addressing the issue of a possible attempt to influence the blog's content, said he had made clear to the Whitman campaign that "advertising and editorial are two very different things".^[80]

In June 2010, Whitman released a political ad, A Lifetime in Politics A Legacy of Failure,^[81] which seemingly contained one image of the FAIL Blog website, making it appear in the ad as if Jerry Brown had been the subject of one of the website's namesake "fails".^[82] Ben Huh, founder of the Cheezburger Network, of which failblog.org is a part, demanded an apology and the removal of the video, stating that the image was faked, and that the website is non-partisan and has never endorsed a particular political candidate or party.^[83]

On November 2, 2010, at 11:35 pm, Whitman conceded the election to her opponent, Jerry Brown, stating "We've come up a little short."^[84]

Voting record[link]

The Sacramento Bee reported that Whitman did not vote for 28 years, after reviewing her voting records in California.^[85][86] Whitman has described her voting record as "atrocious", apologized for it,^[86] and stated that she is happy to discuss the matter.^[87] Whitman answered questions about her record in September, replying, "And I think the reason is, is for many years, I wasn't as engaged in the political process and should have been."^[88]

Housekeeper controversy[link]

In September 2010, Nicky Diaz Santillan revealed that she was employed in the Whitman household as a housekeeper and nanny from 2000–2009 despite her status as an undocumented worker.^[89][90] Whitman's campaign released documents which she says Santillan provided prior to her employment including a driver's license, social security ID, and application.^[91] Santillan says Whitman knew she was undocumented, producing a 2003 letter from the Social Security Administration stating that her Social Security number did not match her name. Whitman initially stated that they "never received those letters",^[92] however, after a hand-written note on the document was shown, believed to be from Whitman's husband, they acknowledged they may have received it, but forgot.^[93][94] Santillan's attorney, Gloria Allred, states that Santillan was fired for the sake of the campaign.^[95] Whitman's campaign maintains that this is a political attack, stating that Allred is a Jerry Brown supporter.^[96][97] Brown, Allred and Santillan all deny this.^[98] Crystal Williams, Director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association stated "Not only is accepting the documents all the law required [Whitman] to do, but there's a counterbalancing anti-discrimination law that keeps her from probing further or demanding different documents."^[99] Others disagree; immigration lawyer Greg Siskind states Whitman was the employer, and the documents by law needed to be signed by her but were not, nor did they have a social security number on them; the Fort Worth Star-Telegram noted that Whitman "hired her, paid her and had direct contact with her for nine years", so should have known her legal status.^[90][100] The L.A. Times noted that Latino voters were more likely interested that Whitman treated Santillan "like a piece of garbage" when the maid asked for help finding an immigration attorney, and Whitman allegedly stated "you don't know me and I don't know you".^[98][101]

Ties to Goldman Sachs[link]

Goldman Sachs, whose executives donated $100,000 to the Whitman campaign, manages a part of Whitman's fortune. As CEO of eBay, Whitman earned approximately $1.78 million resulting from a practice known as spinning whereby executives who did business with Goldman Sachs could reap profits by getting early deals before the public on hot IPOs offered by the bank. While Whitman was on Goldman’s board, she served on the compensation committee, which approved multi-million dollar bonus packages for then-CEO Henry Paulson and his top aides. Public domain documents reveal that Whitman has a multi-million dollar stake in 21 investment funds managed by Goldman.^[41] Given Goldman's major investments in California state finances, all these ties to Goldman Sachs led to considerable controversy during the gubernatorial campaign.^[41] In response, Whitman vowed to eliminate any potential conflicts of interest, and publicly stated that she would immediately sell her Goldman stock and put her Goldman-managed investments in a blind trust if elected governor.

See also[link]

• List of richest American politicians

References[link]