page_title: Elizabeth Dole
section_title: Reagan Administration and Secretary of Transportation
hierarchical_section_title: Elizabeth Dole / White House years / Reagan Administration and Secretary of Transportation
caption_attribution_description: Elizabeth Hanford Dole source 14:38, 15 December 2004 JTilly 275x355 (11829 bytes) (Elizabeth Dole)
context_page_description: Mary Elizabeth "Liddy" Alexander Hanford Dole is an American politician and author who served in the Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush presidential administrations. She also served in the United States Senate from 2003 to 2009.
  A graduate of Duke University and Harvard Law School, Dole served as Secretary of Transportation under Ronald Reagan and Secretary of Labor under George H. W. Bush before becoming head of the American Red Cross. She next served as North Carolina's first female U.S. Senator. She is a member of the Republican Party and former chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. She is married to former U.S. Senate Majority Leader, 1976 Republican vice-presidential nominee and 1996 Republican presidential nominee Bob Dole.
context_section_description: She served as director of the White House Office of Public Liaison, from 1981 to 1983 and as United States Secretary of Transportation from 1983 to 1987 under Ronald Reagan. She was also appointed by Reagan to chair task forces that sought to reform federal and state laws to ensure equal rights for women. She was the first woman appointed Secretary of Transportation. In this role, she was the first woman to have served as the head of a branch of the United States Military, as the United States Coast Guard was under the Department of Transportation at the time. Dole's appointment was "particularly irritating" to conservative activists, since "though at least nominally opposed to abortion, [she was] viewed by the right as [an] aggressive feminist."
  During her tenure, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, mandated the installation of a center high-mounted stop lamp on new cars; these are sometimes called "Liddy Lights" in her recognition. She worked with MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving) to pass laws withholding federal highway funding from any state that had a drinking age below twenty-one. The state government of South Dakota opposed the drinking age law and sued Dole in the case South Dakota v. Dole, but the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Dole. She oversaw the privatization of the national freight railroad, CONRAIL. She initiated random drug testing within the Department of Transportation.
caption: The official Department of Labor portrait of Elizabeth Dole
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