Margaret Ellen Hurley (née Morse; September 10, 1909 – August 29, 2015) was an American politician in the state of Washington.

[1] When Hurley was thirteen, her father sold the farm on the urging of her and her mother and they moved to Spokane so she could attend Holy Names Academy instead of her previous one-room school.

She initially felt like an outsider, having moved from the country and having to wait tables in the dining hall to pay her way through school but she excelled academically, becoming an honors student.

The Mead allowed her to retain her job for one more year, while her husband passed the Washington bar exam and was hired by state senator Fred S. Duggan as a law clerk.

[1] Her husband decided to run for office in the Washington House of Representatives in 1938, contesting the 3rd district as a Democrat, and Hurley ran his campaign.

Their relationship was straining however as her husband developed a drinking problem and then in 1950, chose to return to the state legislature, leaving her to raise the children.

Hurley had a broken leg but continued to the capital, where she cast the deciding vote to elect John L. O'Brien as Speaker of the House; he gave her his "undying gratitude" in his acceptance speech.

During her second term, she was honored for her dedication following the accident and for her work on the budget and taxation, being named Spokane's Outstanding Citizen of the Year by the Central Committee of Civic Clubs.

[1] As her husband's income became increasingly erratic due to his drinking, Hurley returned to university and graduated from Holy Names College in 1959 with a bachelor of arts degree in education.

Widely considered a coalition session, Hurley was appointed as a floor leader but she was not popular with her party, who would not eat lunch with her.

She wrote a formal remonstrance in which she alleged that the department was "consuming huge sums of tax money, rooting up whole communities and covering them with concrete and asphalt", although it was ruled to be out of order by the Republican speaker.

Her bill passed and the project was delayed by decades, finally breaking ground in 2001, with the route changing to avoid the Hamilton-Nevada street corridor, which she particularly opposed.

In the senate, she became involved with environmental activism as a member of the ecology and energy committees, including opposing clear-cutting.

She spoke about a scandal at the Washington Public Power Supply System in Hanford, where whistleblowers had reported dangerous construction and the potential release of radioactive materials.