Women candidates face high standards
By COLLEEN LONG
The Associated Press
NEW YORK (AP) — For the first time in history, a woman has the visibility, the reputation and the cash to make a serious run at the presidency. [...]
However, oddly enough, Geraldine Ferraro does get a fawning nod, for having been selected to run as Vice-President in '84, which is almost as good as your boyfriend giving you his class ring on prom night. If your boyfriend was Fritz Mondale.
The bad thing is, even though the article has a sort of passive-aggressive leftward slant toward Hillary!, the general lack of historical perspective is such that the truly groundbreaking effort by Shirley Chisholm to receive the Democratic nomination is ignored as well. And the fact that there have been a heaping wad of minor party female candidates, too.
Go figure.
(And hey there, Instapundit readers! Thanks for dropping by, and thanks to Doc Reynolds for the link. Sorry the place is a sty, but that's actually an improvement.)
The first woman to receive a vote in the electoral college was Toni Nathan, who ran for vice president on the Libertarian Party ticket in 1964. That year, Virginia elector Roger McBride cast his ballot for Nathan and Libertarian presidential candidate John Hospers. Such "faithless electors" don't happen often, but they're perfectly legal under our electoral college system.
Granted, Nathan is a footnote in history, but I think it's worth noting nonetheless. And yes, the efforts of women like Shirley Chishold and, yes, Elizabeth Woodhull deserve far more recognition than the myopic media give them.
As for Elizabeth Dole, well, being a Republican, she's not really a woman. C'mon Terry - get with the program!
Posted by: Brown Line at May 1, 2007 12:20 PM::hangs head in shame::
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at May 1, 2007 12:22 PMToni Nathan received her electoral college vote in 1972.
Posted by: f.a.hagen at May 1, 2007 12:35 PMIf "a serious run" is defined to mean "a candicacy which might realistically end with a major party's nomination," then she's probably right.
Posted by: ScottM at May 1, 2007 12:48 PMMaybe so, but I'm not quite sure the author of the piece put that much thought into defining terms.
Anyway, even if we say that's what was meant, we'd still need to do a bit of work on what we mean by "might" and "realistically."
Possibilities are boundless, probabilities less so, and given what I've observed of the reality-based community, being realistic ain't all it's cracked up to be.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at May 1, 2007 01:12 PMDon't forget Margaret Chase Smith of Maine, who received a vote at the 1960 Republican convention, the first woman to receive a delegate from either major party. (She had not run for the nomination, which went to Richard Nixon, but she is usually forgotten in lists of first-woman-whatevers.)
Posted by: timekeeper at May 1, 2007 01:19 PMAnd of course, we can't count the 1988 candidacy of Lenora Fulani, Presidential nominee of the New Alliance Party (Communist Party), the first woman and the first African American to achieve ballot access in all fifty states.
We need to add "...and a famous, if sleazy, husband without whom she would still be an unknown Arkansas lawyer..." to her list of features.
Posted by: Jeff R at May 1, 2007 02:02 PMJeff R... one correction. If not for her famous, if sleazy, husband, she would never have set foot in Arkansas in her entire life. She'd either be a partner in a major law firm or a politician in some liberal big city on the coast.
Posted by: PatHMV at May 1, 2007 02:11 PMThankfully, her stint in Arkansas helped her develop her stunning multilingualism skills.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at May 1, 2007 02:20 PMScottM,
I shook Pat Shroeder's hand when she was running for the 1988 Democratic nomination. She was just as viable as the goof they ended up choosing.
Hillary doesn't have the nomination in the bag yet so she is still an also ran like Chisolm, Shroeder, Dole, et al., until she gets it.
Posted by: JDB at May 1, 2007 02:26 PMWhen Ann Richards was elected governor of Texas, half the papers had to be reminded of "Ma" Ferguson (a woman was elected govenor in 1924!?). Most of the rest wouldn't have run corrections anyway.
Posted by: Nony Mouse at May 1, 2007 02:31 PMWell, Ma's a new one on me--she sounds like she was quite a handful.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at May 1, 2007 02:52 PMNo fat jokes, please.
And say - a Jeff commenting on Possumblog? Couldn't be...
Posted by: skinnydan at May 1, 2007 03:53 PMNah--wrong surinitial.
Posted by: Terry Oglesby at May 1, 2007 04:21 PMI'm not sure if this counts as a "serious" candidate, but Winona LaDuke was on the ballet in all 51 states (50 + DC). She was Nader's running mate, which is probably a good enough reason why someone from the NYTs would omit her from the list.
The ticket received just fewer than 3% of the votes, but played an important role in the outcome of a few states - NH & FL in particular.