PERSON: Dana Bash

Senior congressional correspondent

Dana Bash is CNN’s senior congressional correspondent, responsible for covering the activities of both the U.S. House and Senate. In 2010, Bash earned the prestigious Dirksen Award from the National Press Foundation for her reporting on Congressional earmarks and Senatorial “holds.” Named to this position in December 2008 and based in the network’s Washington, D.C., bureau, Bash has covered the U.S. Congress for CNN since March 2006.

As a member of the Peabody Award-winning “Best Political Team on Television,” Bash covered the candidates on the trail for the network’s America Votes 2008 coverage and interviewed the Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on numerous occasions. During the course of the long primary campaign, Bash also interviewed the major Republican contenders and broke many stories, including Gov. Mitt Romney’s decision to suspend his campaign.

Prior to covering Congress and the 2008 campaign, Bash reported as CNN’s White House correspondent from the nation’s capital and from locations around the world covering President George W. Bush and his administration. Bash has reported on major stories including Hurricane Katrina, the CIA leak investigation, and the capture of Saddam Hussein. She was instrumental in CNN’s 2006 mid-term election coverage and the 2004 presidential campaign, which she covered from start to finish.

Bash has extensive experience covering Congress. Prior to her on-air position with the White House unit, Bash was the Capitol Hill producer for CNN, where she had primary editorial and newsgathering responsibility for the network’s coverage of the U.S. Senate. She covered every major story on Capitol Hill, including the Republican dominance in the 2002 elections, the war on terrorism, campaign finance reform, the Florida recount and the impeachment of former President Bill Clinton. Frequently cited on-air by anchors and reporters, she also provided live reporting during the evacuation of the Capitol in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Bash was one of the first journalists to report that Vermont’s Sen. Jim Jeffords would leave the Republican Party in May 2001, giving control of the U.S. Senate to Democrats. In 2002, she broke the story of the government’s secret intercepts of Al Qaeda translations on Sept. 10, 2001, for which received her first Dirksen Award

In 2000, she covered the presidential primaries, including those in Iowa and New Hampshire, traveling extensively with former Vice President Al Gore, Sen. Bill Bradley and other presidential candidates. She also helped coordinate coverage for both the Republican and Democratic vice presidential selections. In addition to the U.S. presidential race, Bash covered House and Senate races across the country as well as national conventions for both parties.

Previously, Bash was an editor in CNN’s Washington bureau, where she planned and coordinated the network’s coverage of Capitol Hill, the State Department and key issues such as Medicare and Social Security. Bash also served as a producer on the network’s public affairs shows, including Late Edition with Frank Sesno, Evans & Novak and Inside Politics Weekend with Wolf Blitzer, producing long-form live interviews with heads of state, lawmakers and other newsmakers.

Bash graduated cum laude with her bachelor’s degree in political communications from George Washington University.

— cnn.com