• Professional Positions: Attorney, U.S. Attorney for AZ district, AZ Attorney General, Governor
• Accomplishments: Illegal immigration reform, strengthening border security, education
• Criticism: Increasing state spending, immigration reform will damage state economy
• Biography Links: Wikipedia, official

Background

• Janet Napolitano was born in New York City and raised in Pittsburgh and Albuquerque. Her father, Leonard Michael Napolitano, was the Dean of the University of New Mexico College of Medicine.
• She graduated from Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California, where she won a Truman Scholarship. She received her law degree from University of Virginia School of Law. In May 2006, she received an honorary doctor of laws degree from the University of Arizona.
• She is a former mountain climber who has hiked the Himalayas and summited Mount Kilimanjaro.

Professional Positions

• Law clerk, U.S. Appeals Court Judge Mary Shroeder, 1983
• Partner with the private Phoenix law firm Lewis and Roca LLP, 1989-1993. She represented Anita Hill in her 1991 sexual-harassment case against Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas.
• Appointed by President Bill Clinton to U.S. Attorney for the District of Arizona, 1993-1998. Investigated Michael Fortier of Kingman, Arizona, in connection to the Oklahoma City bombing.
• Elected state attorney general, 1998-2002. Focused on consumer protection issues and improving general law enforcement.
• Elected Democratic governor of Arizona in 2002 with 46% of the vote. Reelected in 2006 by a large majority.
• Former char of Western Governors Association. Current chair of the National Governors Association. She is the first female governor and first governor of Arizona ever to serve in that position.

Accomplishments

• Immigration Reform and Homeland Security- Napolitano is regarded as a leader in Immigration Reform and Homeland Security. She opposed voter-passed Proposition 200, which would not allow illegal immigrants to collect welfare benefits they are not entitled to. Instead, her plan to address illegal immigration and border security entails targeting systems and people who make illegal immigration possible. She imposed stiff penalties on employers who hire illegal immigrants, created a unit to catch forgers of identity documents, demanded the Federal Government (which is responsible for immigration) reimburse the state what it spent imprisoning illegal immigrants since 2003. She declared a state of emergency in Arizona to receive more federal funds to secure the border and opened the nation's first state counter-terrorism center (Source: AZ Business Journal).
• Public education: Created a new grade level in school by offering voluntary full-day kindergarten to every Arizona family and secured a record $100 million teacher salary package to keep Arizona�s best teachers in the classroom http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1129542,00.html.
• Budget Deficit: Under Napolitano, the state's budget has improved from a billion-dollar deficit in 2002 to a billion-dollar surplus, without a tax increase. She credits her increases in education spending for achieving economic growth (Source: Time).

Criticism

• Napolitano championed herself as a fiscally conservative Democrat but her budgets annually increased spending by an average of 6% over the previous year's total. She outspent 46 other governors. (Source: AZ Business Journal)
• One in ten workers in Arizona is illegal according to the Pew Hispanic Center. Some fear that Napolitano's reforms could seriously disrupt the state's economy. (Source: Tuscon Citizen)

Additional Information

Biography Links

• Wikipedia
• Official Bio