November 21, 2000

Senator Paula Hawkins To Be Inducted into Florida Women’s Hall of Fame

TALLAHASSEE, FL — Former U.S. Senator Paula Hawkins will be inducted into the Florida Women’s Hall of Fame at 5:30 pm today. She was nominated by Congressman John L. Mica (R-Winter Park) and was recently selected by Governor Jeb Bush for induction into the Hall of Fame.

Hawkins became the first woman elected to statewide office in Florida when she was elected to the Florida Public Service Commission in 1972. It was also the first time any candidate had garnered over one million votes in Florida. In 1976, she became the only Florida Republican to be re-elected statewide when she won re-election to the Commission. Because of her willingness to take on big business and the government, the press dubbed her the battling "Maitland Housewife."

In 1980 Hawkins became the first woman elected to the US Senate in her own right, without a husband or father preceding her in politics. On the Senate Floor, she helped lead the fight for the rights of the often forgotten citizens: children, victims of drug abuse, the poor and the elderly.  As a member of the Senate Children’s Caucus, she was effective in raising public awareness of child abuse and was instrumental in passing the Missing Children’s Act of 1982, which established a national clearinghouse for information about missing children and resulted in the locating of more 2,000 children by 1983.

As Senator, she helped initiate the South Florida Drug Task Force that was implemented by President Reagan and was highly successful in the 1980s. Hawkins also assisted in creating the Senate Caucus on International Narcotics Control and was appointed the Senate member of the Advisory Task Force on Narcotics Control. Her proposals linked U.S. financial assistance certification to drug eradication efforts and minimum standards of international human rights laws, later adopted as Public Law 99-570. Because of her leadership in the fight against illegal drugs, Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole called her "the Senate’s General in the War on Drugs."

Although she retired from the U.S. Senate in 1987, Senator Hawkins continued her work fighting illegal drug use, helping neglected and abused children and reversing the decline in education.

Hawkins served as a chief delegate to the United Nations Drug Conference in 1987 held in Vienna, Austria. She was also a delegate to the United Kingdom/United Nations Cocaine Summit held in London in 1989. As the U.S. Principal Representative with Diplomatic rank to the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission of the Organization of American States, Hawkins has been U.S. head of delegation to over nine ministerial level meetings in Washington, DC and abroad. She served both President Clinton and former President Bush as Chairman of the National Commission of Responsibilities for Financing Post-Secondary Education.

Moving to Maitland in 1955, Senator Hawkins began her public service by becoming actively involved in local community affairs, participating as an officer in the Parent Teacher Association and other civic organizations. As her precinct’s representative to the Orange County Republican Executive Committee in 1964, she assumed positions of greater responsibility over the next decade. She has been listed in Who’s Who In America and in Who’s Who In American Women.

The induction ceremony will be held in Tallahassee at the Capitol Rotunda at 5:30 pm today.

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