Grace Poe (full married name: Mary Grace Natividad Poe-Llamanzares) is a senator in the 19th Congress, serving her second and final term until 2025. She topped the Senate race in 2013, in her first ever bid for an elective post, and placed second in her reelection in 2019.
Prior to her Senate run, Poe’s only experience in politics was campaigning for her adoptive father, the King of Philippine Movies Fernando Poe Jr., when the latter ran for president in 2004. The extremely popular FPJ lost to incumbent Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in an election widely believed to be marred by systematic fraud. Grace Poe’s mother, actress Susan Roces (real name: Jesusa Sonora-Poe), would eventually make the now-iconic remarks addressed to Arroyo: “You have stolen the presidency, not once but twice.”
Poe spent her early college years taking up development studies at the University of the Philippines-Manila, but later earned her degree in political science from Boston College in Massachusetts. She worked, got married, and raised a family in the United States, coming home to the Philippines temporarily to campaign for her father in 2004, and then permanently to be with her mother after her father died later that year.
Upon her return to the Philippines in 2005, she served as treasurer and vice president of FPJ Productions, and managed its archives of more than 200 films, a few of which featured her when she was a little girl tagging along her father to movie sets and given minor roles.
President Benigno Aquino III appointed Grace Poe to chair the Movie and Television Regulatory and Classification Board (MTRCB), where she introduced new rating systems for television and movies that could safeguard children from inappropriate materials and unhealthy viewing habits. Her leadership promoted “intelligent media viewership” instead of “censorship.” She served in the agency from 2010 to 2012, and resigned to prepare for the 2013 senatorial campaign.
In the middle of her six-year term, in 2016, Poe ran for president, initially doing well in surveys until a disqualification case was filed against her, which sought to raise doubts about her being a natural-born citizen, given that she was a foundling. The Supreme Court would later decide in her favor, but not after a considerable part of her support base had been diminished. She finished third in the presidential race, after Rodrigo Duterte and administration candidate Manuel Roxas II. As there was no law requiring senators to quit when they ran for other posts midterm, Poe resumed her senatorial term after losing in the presidential poll. She ran for reelection in 2019, and won.
Poe has advocated access to proper nutrition and education for children, particularly addressing stunting among young Filipinos. She has also pushed for film tourism, intended to revitalize the movie industry and generate jobs.
In the past, Poe chaired the committee on public order and dangerous drugs – the first woman to do so – and the committee on public services, where she deftly presided inquiries into transportation and telecommunications issues that resonated with the wider public. As chairperson of the committee on public information and mass media, she pushed for what would become the Freedom of Information law. She currently chairs the Senate finance committee.
In 2015, Poe led the investigation into the Mamasapano clash, where a breakdown in the Philippine National Police’s chain of command led to the death of 44 members of the Special Action Force while on a mission to arrest Malaysian terrorists in Maguindanao. Twenty-three Moro fighters and five also died in the encounter. Her committee concluded that “inadequate Intelligence, poor planning and lack of coordination” on the part of the government led to the deaths. It also took to task then-president Aquino for allowing former PNP chief Alan Purisima to usurp authority and run the operations.
Poe is married to Teodoro Misael Daniel Vera Llamanzares, with whom she has three children.
