10 Things You Didn't Know About Claire McCaskill

Senator McCaskill is holding healthcare town hall meetings in Missouri.

1. Claire Conner McCaskill was born on July 24, 1953, in Rolla, Mo., and raised in the towns of Lebanon and Columbia. Her father worked as a state insurance commissioner, and her mother was Columbia's first female City Council member.

2. McCaskill attended Hickman High School in Columbia, where she was the president of the pep squad and elected homecoming queen. During high school, she also worked at a fabric store and sewed her own clothes.

3. She graduated from the University of Missouri in 1975 with a B.A. in political science and received a juris doctor from the university's law school in 1978. In college, she was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority.

4. McCaskill worked as a waitress for six years to pay her way through college and law school.

5. After law school, McCaskill clerked for the Missouri Court of Appeals and then served as an assistant prosecutor.

6. McCaskill was the first woman to give birth while an active member of the Missouri legislature.

7. In 1993, she became the first female prosecutor in Jackson County.

8. In 2004, McCaskill was the first person in Missouri history to defeat an incumbent governor in a primary. She lost the general election.

9. She became the first female elected as a senator from Missouri in 2006 and will become the state's senior senator after Sen. Christopher Bond retires in 2011.

10. McCaskill is the second-most-followed member of Congress on Twitter, with 31,093 followers. John McCain is the first.

Sources:

• Mccaskill.senate.gov
• Claireonline.com
• Tweetcongress.org

Corrected on 8/25/09: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Claire McCaskill was the first female senator from Missouri. She was the first woman elected to that position, but Jean Carnahan was appointed as the state's first female senator.