Whatever their skin color or position on the Democratic spectrum, women across the Puget Sound region view Hillary Clinton’s acceptance of the party’s presidential nomination as a moment that will forever redefine American ideas of the nation’s highest office, carrying significance far beyond the emotion of the moment.
“The presidency has always been constructed as a very masculine thing — the father of our country, a general, a war hero,” said Margaret O’Mara, an associate professor of history at the University of Washington and author of ” Pivotal Tuesdays: Four Elections That Shaped the Twentieth Century.”
“With Hillary, it’s always ‘what side of the street does she walk on — is she commander-in-chief or is she the mother-in-chief?’ ”
O’Mara, who worked for President Clinton’s administration during the early 1990s, has watched the former first lady navigate a difficult, sometimes treacherous, path between her various roles: first spouse and policy expert, campaigner and grandmother.
“In the political arena, it’s been a dangerous game for women to present oneself as both a strong leader and human. So this is a really big deal,” O’Mara said.
Hardly the first woman to run for president, Clinton follows Shirley Chisolm, Bella Abzug and Elizabeth Dole, among others. But she is the first to secure the nomination of a major party.
Clinton entered political life in the 1970s — first as a congressional legal counsel and later as first lady of Arkansas — a time when many states did not allow women to take out credit cards in their own names. Her position as a longtime political insider is, ironically, part of what makes her candidacy so remarkable, said Stephanie Coontz, a history professor at The Evergreen State College, who has built her career studying women’s changing roles.
Many of Clinton’s predecessors, noted Coontz, were seen as fringe candidates, firebrands or dissidents.
“For baby boomers, young women who were literally laughed at if they expressed a desire to be a political or economic leader, this is really a stunning kind of thing,” Coontz said.
Many veteran women politicians in Washington said they never expected to see a woman nominated for president in their lifetimes.
Jean Godden, who had a 30-year journalism career before serving three terms on Seattle City Council, said, “I’m delirious. How long has it taken us to get here?”
Godden, now 84, recalled being twice turned down by editors at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer when she applied to cover Olympia. “We weren’t allowed to cover politics. That was a man’s job,” she said.
Pat Davis, 81, was the first woman elected to the Seattle Port Commission in 1986. During her campaign, she received angry calls from men who’d found out she was “Patricia” and not “Patrick.”
They called her a fraud. She went on to serve for five terms.
Asked about Hillary Clinton’s acceptance of the presidential nomination, Davis described herself as thrilled.
“I remember how difficult it is for a female elected to prove herself,” she said.
State Rep. Noel Frame, D-Seattle, is an inheritor of those pioneers. Attending the convention as a delegate for Bernie Sanders, Frame said she’ll have no problem backing Clinton this fall, in part, because she relates to the candidate’s toughness and determination – despite those who would evaluate her for other qualities.
“She is absolutely judged by a different standard, as are all women who are in the public eye,” Frame said. “She is judged for the pitch of her voice. She is judged for the clothes she wears. She is judged for her laugh.”
Elsewhere on the convention floor, Germaine Kornegay, a delegate from Sedro-Woolley, was awaiting Clinton’s acceptance speech and thinking about her granddaughter, Lillianah, who will turn 6 as Clinton accepts the nomination.
Kornegay had heard that Sanders supporters planned to protest Clinton’s speech. For them, she had just a few choice words: “Don’t ruin this for my granddaughter.”
Back in Seattle, Dorothy Hollingsworth, 95, planned to watch the speech from her room at the Lakeshore Retirement Home in South Seattle. In 1975, she was the first African-American woman elected to the Seattle School Board.
“I felt we should have been there all along,” Hollingsworth said. “I feel the same way about Hillary.”
