Nancy McDonald
Encyclopedia
Nancy Hanks McDonald was a Democratic
Democratic Party (United States)
The Democratic Party is one of two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Republican Party. The party's socially liberal and progressive platform is largely considered center-left in the U.S. political spectrum. The party has the lengthiest record of continuous...

 member of the Texas House of Representatives
Texas House of Representatives
The Texas House of Representatives is the lower house of the Texas Legislature. The House is composed of 150 members elected from single-member districts across the state. The average district has about 150,000 people. Representatives are elected to two-year terms with no term limits...

 from District 76 covering Ysleta and parts of El Paso
El Paso, Texas
El Paso, is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States, and lies in far West Texas. In the 2010 census, the city had a population of 649,121. It is the sixth largest city in Texas and the 19th largest city in the United States...

 in El Paso County.

A seven-term state representative from El Paso
El Paso, Texas
El Paso, is a city in and the county seat of El Paso County, Texas, United States, and lies in far West Texas. In the 2010 census, the city had a population of 649,121. It is the sixth largest city in Texas and the 19th largest city in the United States...

, McDonald first served in the 1984 special session that enacted major reforms relating to public education; she was elected to a full term in the fall of 1984 and continued to serve through 1996, when she declined to run again.

Legislative History

The only Registered Nurse when she first came to the Texas Capitol in Austin, McDonald played a key role in securing funding for health and human services programs, authored landmark child immunization legislation, and advocated for AIDS
AIDS
Acquired immune deficiency syndrome or acquired immunodeficiency syndrome is a disease of the human immune system caused by the human immunodeficiency virus...

 patients; her committee assignments included the vice chairmanship of the appropriations committee, longtime service on the public health committee, and service on the Ways and Means
Ways and Means
Ways and Means may refer to:* Committee of Ways and Means of the UK parliament* United States House Committee on Ways and Means* "Ways and Means" , an episode of the television series The West Wing...

 and the labor and employment relations committees.

Family

Born in Bowling Green, Kentucky
Bowling Green, Kentucky
Bowling Green is the third-most populous city in the state of Kentucky after Louisville and Lexington, with a population of 58,067 as of the 2010 Census. It is the county seat of Warren County and the principal city of the Bowling Green, Kentucky Metropolitan Statistical Area with an estimated 2009...

 as Nancy Hanks, she graduated from the St Thomas School of Nursing in Nashville
Nashville, Tennessee
Nashville is the capital of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the county seat of Davidson County. It is located on the Cumberland River in Davidson County, in the north-central part of the state. The city is a center for the health care, publishing, banking and transportation industries, and is home...

 in 1954, the same year she married Willis Burr McDonald, with whom she would have 10 children.

Activism

In 1975 she became active in the Texas Nurses Association, eventually serving as president of the governmental affairs committee and forming a TNA political action committees. She also held membership in the National Organization for Women
National Organization for Women
The National Organization for Women is the largest feminist organization in the United States. It was founded in 1966 and has a membership of 500,000 contributing members. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S...

 and took part in the 1980 march in Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....

 in support of the Equal Rights Amendment
Equal Rights Amendment
The Equal Rights Amendment was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution. The ERA was originally written by Alice Paul and, in 1923, it was introduced in the Congress for the first time...

.
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