Bonnie J. Campbell is an American lawyer, a former Iowa Attorney General, a former Iowa gubernatorial candidate, a former official in the U.S. Department of Justice and a former federal judicial nominee to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.

Early life, education and career prior to elected office

Originally from Norwich, New York

Norwich (town), New York

Norwich is a town in Chenango County, New York, United States. The population was 3,836 at the 2000 census. The town was named after Norwich, Connecticut.The Town of Norwich is located near the center of the county...

, Campbell moved to Washington, D.C. after completing high school and began working for a succession of politicians, including for United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Robert C. Weaver

Robert C. Weaver

Robert Clifton Weaver served as the first United States Secretary of Housing and Urban Development from 1966 to 1968. He was the first African American to hold a cabinet-level position in the United States.As a young man, Weaver had been one of 45 prominent African Americans appointed by...

 as a clerk-stenographer from 1965 until 1967. She then worked as a clerk for the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Intergovernmental Relations from 1967 until 1969. She joined the office of U.S. Sen. Harold Hughes

Harold Hughes

Harold Everett Hughes was the 36th Governor of Iowa from 1963 until 1969; he had been a Republican earlier in his life. He also served as a Democratic United States Senator from 1969 until 1975.-Background:...

 as a caseworker from 1969 until 1974. Her work for Hughes brought her to Iowa, where she took a job with U.S. Sen. John Culver

John Culver

John Chester Culver is an American politician of the Democratic Party who represented Iowa in both the United States House of Representatives and the United States Senate....

 as a field office coordinator from 1974 until 1981.

During her time working for Senator Culver, Campbell pursued her undergraduate degree, earning a bachelor's degree from Drake University

Drake University

Drake University is a private, co-educational university located in Des Moines, Iowa, USA. The institution offers a number of undergraduate and graduate programs, as well as professional programs in law and pharmacy. Today, Drake is one of the twenty-five oldest law schools in the country....

 in 1982. She subsequently earned a law degree from Drake University Law School

Drake University Law School

Drake University Law School is a fully accredited law school of Drake University, located in Des Moines, Iowa. The school has over 400 full-time students. The school is presently led by Dean Allan Vestal. The most recent edition of US News and World Report's Best Law Schools ranked Drake in the...

 in 1984. She worked as a lawyer in private practice in Iowa from 1985 until 1991, and also was the chairwoman of the Iowa Democratic Party from 1987 until 1991.

Career in electoral politics and later work in the U.S. Department of Justice

In 1990, Campbell won election as Iowa's attorney general as a Democrat, defeating her Republican opponent, Ed Kelly. She is known most during her time as attorney general for having written an anti-stalking law that became a national blueprint. In 1994, Campbell ran for governor but lost to incumbent Gov. Terry Branstad by a margin of 57 percent to 42 percent. On March 21, 1995, President Clinton appointed Campbell to head the U.S. Department of Justice's newly created Violence Against Women office. Campbell's own family life helped to inform her experience in the role, given that her half-brother, Stephen Pierce, had been found guilty in 1975 of murdering a 16-year-old girl during a rape attempt. "In a sense, I suppose you could call it making amends," Campbell told People

People (magazine)

In 1998, the magazine introduced a version targeted at teens called Teen People. However, on July 27, 2006, the company announced it would shut down publication of Teen People immediately. The last issue to be released was scheduled for September 2006. Subscribers to this magazine received...

magazine in an article that appeared on November 20, 1995. "While I had nothing to do with Stephen's crime, it left a permanent scar on me."

In 1997, Time

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

magazine named Campbell one of the magazine's 25 most influential Americans.

Nomination to the Eighth Circuit

On March 2, 2000, President Clinton nominated Campbell to the Eighth Circuit vacancy created by the retirement of George Gardner Fagg. Almost immediately, despite the fact that she had the support of both her state's Democratic and Republican senators, Republican senators targeted her nomination, noting that she had angered Christian conservatives during her 1994 gubernatorial run by saying, "I hate to call them Christian because I am Christian, and I hate to call them religious, because they're not, so I'll call them the radical right." While the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee did conduct a hearing on her judicial nomination on May 25, 2000, with less than eight months remaining before Clinton's presidency ended, the Republican-led Judiciary Committee never voted on her nomination, preventing the Senate from ever taking a full vote on her nomination. Clinton renominated her on January 3, 2001, but her nomination was returned by President Bush on March 20, 2001, along with 61 other executive and judicial nominations that Clinton had made. "I have a political background and I think I saw it for what it was," Campbell told the Des Moines Business Record in an article that was published on August 25, 2003. "It was a political battle....I don't think it was personal."

Career since the failed nomination

After Clinton's term ended, Campbell joined the Washington, D.C. law firm Arent, Fox, Kintner, Plotkin & Kahn. She moved back to Iowa in 2003 and opened a private legal practice. In 2007, she was appointed by Gov. Chet Culver

Chet Culver

Chester John "Chet" Culver was the 41st Governor of Iowa, from 2007 to 2011. He was also elected as the Federal Liaison for the Democratic Governors Association for 2008-2009. He founded the Chet Culver Group, an energy sector consulting firm, in 2011.-Early life and education:Culver was born in...

to the state Board of Regents.