On the recordDecember 11, 2018
Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues in honoring and paying tribute to my friend and mentor, Senator Heidi Heitkamp. I am particularly and profoundly grateful for both her trailblazing work mentoring women who want to run for public office and her remarkable ability to get things done across party lines in the Senate. For years, Senator Heitkamp has been at the forefront of mentoring other women and encouraging them to enter public service, recognizing that balanced representation is vital to our country's success. In fact, Heidi Heitkamp and I first met through a program that she helped start to encourage and prepare women to run for office--to do more than just tell us it was possible but to help us understand that there were ways to prepare for it, to run in our own way, to be our own people. She helped demonstrate that even though you may experience setbacks--including her own setback battling breast cancer--you still have what it takes to serve your communities and to make a difference. I am incredibly grateful for those lessons, I am incredibly grateful for her efforts because they have helped inspire women all across the country. All the issues that Heidi just talked about in her farewell speech-- there are now armies of current and future public servants who will take those issues and challenges as their own because she has helped prepare them to do that. Then there is Senator Heitkamp's work in the Senate.…





