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Posted: Oct. 27, 2016 GLASS CEILING POLITICSBy Celia Cohen Delaware could be about to do on Election Day what it has never done before. If the polls are right, it will be smashing another couple of glass ceilings for women in politics, namely, Hillary Clinton and Lisa Blunt Rochester. Clinton looks to be on her way to collecting the state's three electoral votes as the next Democratic president, and Rochester could rewrite the all-male history of the federal delegation as a Democratic congresswoman, not to mention she would be its first African-American member, too. It has taken the better part of a century to get here. The voters put a woman in state office for the first time in 1924, when Florence Hanby was elected as a Republican state representative, four years after women were granted the right to vote. The gender barrier to statewide office was not crossed until 1956, when Vera Davis was elected as the Republican state treasurer. The pre-eminent breakthrough, though, belongs to Ruth Ann Minner, elected as the Democratic governor in 2000. With the 2016 election, women could make their way into nearly all of the statewide offices, although not senator and surprisingly not state auditor, which is kindred to state treasurer, a post where women have thrived. Finally, history is her-story, too.
Source: Delaware election returns ### |
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