Answer:
The answer to your question would be that the sentence in which the quotation is introduced correctly is the following one: The majority leader wrote about the first lady's accomplishments: "She has earned my respect".
Explanation:
The colon can be used instead of the semicolon between independent clauses when the second sentence explains, illustrates, or paraphrases the first sentence. In this case, the second clause illustrates the first one as it states the words written by the majority leader. These words are between quotation marks because they are not the words by the speaker or the one uttering the sentence. What is more, in American English, periods go inside the punctuation mark, so it can be said that the sentence in question follows all the punctuation rules regarding quotations.
