Twice-elected South Carolina State Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum has a career history of working with children. Now the former elementary schoolteacher hopes to translate that background, coupled with her moderate Democratic beliefs into a U.S. Senate seat in this Republican-leaning state.

Tenenbaum has informally distanced herself from the presidential campaign of Massachusetts Democratic Sen. John Kerry and his more liberal policies. Tenenbaum acknowledged the strategy in an interview with the Washington Post saying Republicans will attempt to show her to be a classic Democratic liberal.

"Fortunately, the people of South Carolina know me," she told the Post. "I think it will fall on deaf ears, that attempt to label me and try to nationalize me."

Tenenbaum has said the issues she intends to focus on in her Senate race are creating jobs, education and health care.

"The issues South Carolinians care about are the issues I care about: education, health and families," she said. "Education is an economic development tool. As a former school teacher and attorney, I know that Congress can enact policies that create incentives to develop jobs."

Since 2001 South Carolina has lost over 70,000 jobs to outsourcing, many in the textile industry. Tenenbaum says she'll work to bring jobs back to South Carolina by ensuring enforcement of current trade agreements in Congress as well as opposing new trade agreements that harm the Palmetto State.

Tenenbaum's campaign was embarrassed in early August during a conference call with reporters aimed at highlighting her pledge to protect American jobs from going overseas. Reporters on the call discovered the hookup was arranged by communications workers in Montreal, Canada. The campaign promised to stop using BellSouth, the company that provided the hookup, for that service again.

In contrast to many in her party, Tenenbaum would extend President Bush's tax cut policies.

"I want to make permanent President Bush's tax cuts for the middle class, including extending the 10 percent bracket, doubling the child tax credit and making permanent the marriage penalty reduction. South Carolina's middle class families need a tax cut, not a tax hike," she wrote in an Aug. 30 editorial in The Greenville News.

Tenenbaum is also moderate on social issues. She supports President Bush's call for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage. She supports the war in Iraq. She favors the death penalty. And while Tenenbaum supports abortion rights she is for a ban on certain late-term abortions. However, Tenenbaum would not support any ban on partial-birth abortion that did not include an exception for the health of the mother, such as the ban that passed in Congress last year.

Tenenbaum's two-term tenure as state superintendent of education generally receives positive reviews. The popular education leader is credited with improving the state's public education system.

Under Education Week's national report card called "Quality Counts," South Carolina was rated No. 1 in teacher improvement in 2003 and 2004. And up until this year, the state saw continued improvement in SAT scores. Tenenbaum released early results for the 2004 SAT in late August. The average score dropped by 3 points.

"It's the first time in six years we've had a dip," she said.

In addition, without raising taxes, Tenenbaum was able to negotiate over $750 million for new schools.

Tenenbaum was born in Hawkinsville, Ga. on March 8, 1951. She attended the University of Georgia where she obtained a Bachelor's of science degree in 1972 and a Master's degree in education two years later. She moved to South Carolina in 1975 to license Head Start facilities and federally funded child care centers.

She married Samuel Tenenbaum in 1984. In 1986, after working as research director of the Medical, Military, Public and Municipal Affairs Committee of the S.C. House of Representatives, Tenenbaum graduated from the University of South Carolina's Law School. She worked for the law firm Sinkler & Boyd, focusing on health, environmental and other public interest cases through 1992.

Tenenbaum established the South Carolina Center for Family Policy, a nonprofit organization that aims to reform the state's juvenile justice system in 1992.

She ran and lost the primary race for state lieutenant governor in 1994.

Although Tenenbaum has denied that gender is a factor, a potential victory would make her the first woman senator from South Carolina.