The historic campaign of Barack Obama left many of us in a difficult position to fully appreciate the equally historic campaign of Hillary Clinton, and the racial subtexts of the battle between them cast the tenacity of Clinton’s campaign in an unsettling light.
However, Clinton’s toughness is characteristic of a generation of women political leaders who are very ably represented in Missouri. The primary campaigns that culminated in Tuesday’s state primary election made that very evident. The established Democratic leadership in this state and city – which is very heavily male-dominated – needs to read these signs correctly if Missouri Democrats are to unite tightly enough to beat John McCain and Kenny Hulsof in November.
The conventional wisdom, retailed by many men throughout the primary campaigns, underestimated several women in terms of work ethic, toughness and electability.
For example, many Democrats preferred Robin Wright-Jones’ voting record to that of Rodney Hubbard, but understood Hubbard to be the harder worker with a huge campaign war chest who was likely to win the 5th Senatorial District seat. Hubbard did work hard, but he was either outworked or outsmarted by Wright-Jones – probably both, because she won, albeit narrowly.
Similarly, Margaret Donnelly was systematically underestimated by many Democrats, though never by this newspaper. Many even suggested, as the campaign of former Republican Chris Koster gained steam, that Donnelly should concede and lend her support and votes to Jeff Harris.
In the end, it was Harris who should have folded for the benefit of Donnelly. She beat Harris by more than 31,000 votes and was close enough to Koster (unofficial counts had her losing by less than 800 votes) to raise the question of a recount. Without a woman spoiler candidate, the nomination would have gone securely to Donnelly.
In the state representative races, many of the more interesting fights pitted men against men, or women against women. But in one case where an incumbent woman, Maria Chappelle-Nadal, was challenged by a man with a problematic personal history that is on public record (Tony Condra), the woman ran an efficient and devastating campaign that resulted in a thrashing of her opponent (2,386 votes to 562) at the polls.
Each of these victorious women candidates has flaws. We particularly regret the disingenuous use that Wright-Jones (and many women acting on her behalf) made of Hubbard’s courageous support of the land-assembly tax credit which could open the way to historic development in North St. Louis. Wright-Jones resorted to demagoguery in an effort to win. We expect when she is seated in the state Senate that she will give a fair hearing to the issue of land assemblage and the transformative development that could ensue from it. Indeed, she voted for the measure after Hubbard had added a provision requiring local approval of developments that qualify for the incentive.
Despite their flaws, women in Missouri politics have shown an unmistakable ability to wage campaigns and win elections. If men in Missouri politics continue to underestimate women, they will continue to back some of the wrong candidates and to lose crucial elections. They also will hold back the party and the state. Moving forward – and, with Barack Obama, we are all moving forward – we challenge men to take their women colleagues more seriously and to embrace them as powerful and strategic allies.
As Mike Jones in the County Executive’s Office said to us this week, “Women make as good of soldiers as men.” Indeed, sometimes, they make better soldiers – and better generals.