BENTLEY ANNOUNCES RUN FOR CONGRESS
Helen Delich Bentley, formerly chairman of the Federal Maritime Commission and a five-term congresswoman, said Tuesday she intends to run for the U.S. House seat from Maryland's Second District, a seat she vacated in 1995.
Bentley, the 78-year-old Republican, speaking to supporters on a pier along the Baltimore waterfront, said, “my thoughts, like the spokes of a wheel, keep returning to one central abiding theme … security, and all its component parts — homeland security, national security and economic security. It is because of what I have to offer, the unique perspective I bring, in these three areas, that I want to return to the Congress.”
Bentley was the first woman to head a federal regulatory agency when President Nixon appointed her to the FMC chair in 1969. Bentley chaired the FMC until 1975, when her term on the commission ended.
She was elected to Congress in 1984, and served through 1995.