Washington D.C. - Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is probably the most famous to date, and certainly the one who is closest to actually winning her party's nomination, but she's definitely not the first American woman to run for President of the United States.Research from the National Women's History Museum shows that at least 35 women have tried before. Most remain unknown, and a few represented parties of dubious standing, including the Surprise Party and the Looking Back Party. Some of them, however, are worth mentioning.
It was Victoria Claflin Woodhull (in the photo) who first undertook the long, and yet to be completed, journey to a woman president. In 1890 she announced her intention of running by sending a letter to the New York Herald, despite being too young too qualify as a candidate. The elections were still two years away, by which point she would have been 34, and Ms. Woodhull used that time to travel across the country campaigning and raising awareness of women's issues. A colorful personality considered among the initiators of the suffragists movement, one must remember that Victoria Woodhull ran at a time when, as a woman, she didn't even have the right to vote. Stirring controversies everywhere she went, she was incarcerated at the time the elections took place, on charges of libel and obscenity.
In 1884 came the turn of Belva Lockwood, who ran for the Equal Rights Party, which not only advocated for extending all rights to women, but also had plans for the economy and foreign affairs.
The first credible female candidate was Margaret Chase Smith, who ran in 1964 for the Republican Party after having served in Congress for 32 years, the first woman to be elected to both the House and the Senate. She won 27 delegates at the convention, where she lost the nomination to conservative Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater.
Patsy Takemoto Mink was number four. An Hawaiian of Japanese descent whose father, despite being a U.S. citizen, had nonetheless been put under surveillance and interrogated in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, Ms. Mink was the first non-white woman to appear on a presidential ballot when a group of liberal democrats asked her to run in the Oregon primaries in 1972.
Shirley Anita Chisholm was the first well-known African-American woman to run for President. A democrat, and the first African-American woman in Congress, she gave a shot to the White House during her second term as a Congresswoman, in 1972.
More recently Elizabeth Hanford Dole, wife of Kansas Senator Robert Dole, ran against George W. Bush and John McCain in the Republican primaries of 2000.
Finally, in 2003 Illinois Senator Carol Moseley-Braun announced her intention of taking part in the Democratic primaries. However, encountering difficulties in fund-raising, she dropped out before the January Iowa Caucus.This year is Hillary Clinton's year, although numbers suggest that the United States might have to wait at least four more years before electing a woman president.
