Ellen Tauscher, the former congresswoman and State Department official who helped negotiate the New START treaty during the Barack Obama administration, died from pneumonia at the age of 67, her family announced Tuesday.
“It is with the greatest sadness in our hearts that we announce the passing of our beloved mother, sister, aunt, and friend, Ellen O’Kane Tauscher,” Tauscher’s family wrote on her Facebook page. “Ellen died peacefully surrounded by her loving daughter, Katherine, and the rest of her family.”
Tauscher had been fighting pneumonia since January, the family said. In early April, Tauscher herself wrote on Twitter that she was recovering from the pneumonia, which was complicated by a 2010 surgery to treat esophageal cancer.
Tauscher, a Democrat, represented California’s 10th Congressional District from 1997 to 2009. In Congress, Tauscher chaired the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, which sets defense policies for Pentagon nuclear forces and the National Nuclear Security Administration.
From 2009 to 2012, she served in the Obama administration as undersecretary of state for arms control and international security. At State, Tauscher helped negotiate the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which limits the United States and Russia to 1,550 deployed long-range nuclear warheads through at least 2021. The two nations may extend the deal into 2026.
Most recently, Tauscher chaired the University of California Board of Regents’ national laboratories subcommittee. In that role, Tauscher oversaw the university’s work as the lead partner on the management and operations teams for both the Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories: the Department of Energy’s main nuclear-weapons design sites.
Then-California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) appointed Tauscher to the University of California Board of Regents in 2017. She replaced Norman Pattiz as chair of the national labs subcommittee in February 2018.
