• Democratic member of Congress
• Member of the Progressive Caucus
• Defended the Marxist dictatorship in Nicaragua
• Former Executive Director of EMILY’s List

Rosa DeLauro is a Democratic Member of Congress who represents the Third District of Connecticut, centered on New Haven and Yale University. A member of the House of Representatives’ Progressive Caucus, DeLauro is a close political ally of Nancy Pelosi. DeLauro chairs the Agriculture Subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee; she also serves on the Appropriations Committee's Labor-Health and Human Services-Education Subcommittees, as well as on the House Budget Committee.

Born in March 1943, DeLauro grew up in a political family. Both her parents were New Haven aldermen. She attended the London School of Economics in 1962-63, graduated from Marymount College (in New York) in 1964, and earned a master’s degree from Columbia University in 1966.

DeLauro's political career began as Executive Assistant to New Haven's mayor in 1976. She served as Chief of Staff for Democratic Senator Christopher Dodd from 1980-1987, at a time when Dodd was a leading opponents of the Contras and other anti-Communist forces in Central America.

In 1987 and 1988, DeLauro was Executive Director of Countdown '87, which she boasts was "the national campaign that successfully stopped U.S. military aid to the Nicaraguan Contras."

In 1989-1990, DeLauro served as Executive Director of the fundraising organization EMILY's List. When her local congressman ran for Governor of Connecticut in 1990, DeLauro entered the race for his vacated House seat. With the connections that EMILY's List gave her to celebrity money and political favors, she raised $957,000 for her campaign and won by a narrow margin. She has been re-elected every two years since then.

According to Americans for Democratic Action, congresswoman DeLauro votes with the Left 95 to 100 percent of the time. During her legislative career, DeLauro has voted:

• against the development of a national missile defense system;
• in favor of the post-9/11 anti-terrorism measure known as the Patriot Act;
• against allowing the U.S. government to use electronic surveillance to investigate suspected terrorist operatives;
• against a bill permitting the government to combat potential terrorist threats by monitoring foreign electronic communications which are routed through the United States;
• against an October 2002 joint resolution authorizing U.S. military action in Iraq;
• against the establishment of military commissions to try enemy combatants captured in the war on terror;
• in favor of withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq immediately and by a preordained date;
• against President Bush’s 2007 decision to deploy some 21,500 additional U.S. soldiers in an effort to quell the violent insurgents in Iraq;
• in favor of a proposal to expedite the transfer of all prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay detention center;
• against requiring hospitals to report (to the federal government) illegal aliens who receive emergency medical treatment;
• against the Real ID Act, which proposed to set minimal security requirements for state driver licenses and identification cards;
• against separate proposals calling for the construction of some 700 miles of fencing to prevent illegal immigration along America's southern border;
• against a proposal to grant state and local officials the authority to investigate, identify, and arrest illegal immigrants;
• against major tax cut bills in September 1998, February 2000, March 2000, July 2000, May 2001, May 2003, October 2004, and May 2006;
• against separate welfare-reform bills designed to move people off the welfare rolls and into paying jobs;
• in favor of prohibiting oil and gas exploration in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR); and
• against a proposal to fund offshore oil exploration along the Outer Continental Shelf.

Though she is a Roman Catholic, DeLauro voted against legislation to ban the late-term abortion procedure commonly known as partial-birth abortion in November 1995, September 1996, March 1997, July 1998, June 2003, and October 2003.

DeLauro is married to Stanley Greenberg, who was Bill Clinton's chief pollster from 1991-1994, and a pollster for Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000. In 1999, Greenberg co-founded Democracy Corps with Democratic Party operatives James Carville and Bob Shrum.