- There was only two type of jobs good for Black women, and I had no desire to be either one.

- Growing up in the fifties, you could be a nurse, you could be a teacher, you could be a housewife.

But those seemed to be sort of the limits of women.

- I would be in a room with all men, and I got used to it.

After a while, it doesn't matter.

- It's pretty hard to carry your case unless you're pretty outspoken and pretty stubborn.

- I never ever thought that someday I would be in Congress.

No one in our family had ever gone to college or finished high school.

- Girls just weren't seen as legacies.

So at the end of the day when he looked around, there was nobody left but me.

- My husband's comment to me was, "Good grief, you're spending every day down there anyway.

Why don't you run for mayor?"

It had nothing to do with being a woman because I knew I could do the job.

(bright inspirational music) - [Announcer] "Trailblazing Women in Ohio Politics" is brought to you in part by Dr. Maribeth S. and Martin E. Rahe, the Ohio History Fund, a program of the Ohio History Connection, Ohio Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Bowling Green State University, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

(choir vocalizing "The Star Spangled Banner") - My parents divorced when I was five years old, and so I ended up with my grandparents, and we lived at a funeral home.

So my first job was carrying flowers at funerals.

Yeah.

And my family had me really involved in the business.

- I grew up in a family market.

Our mother baked pies in that store.

Our dad made homemade kielbasa, homemade sausage, homemade veal loaf.

I'll never have veal loaf like that again.

He made the best veal loaf out.

And we would go with him bouncing in his truck, my brother and myself, and we'd go to the market and get all the supplies, and we helped to stack the shelves.

It was a wonderful, wonderful family.

- So I always knew from the time I was, first grade, I can remember, I'm going to get a doctorate in something 'cause education was important to my family.

And I'm not gonna be a teacher or I'm not gonna do those things.

Not that I don't value them, but I had very strong women role models who didn't believe in that and pushed those boundaries.

My mother was in sales.

My grandmother was a county chairwoman for a Republican Party, and was a redheaded raconteur and held great sway.

- When I was young, I had no idea that I would be involved in politics.

I did community work, but, and that was where I was going.

And being married with children, mother and housekeeper, and that was it.

During my latter years of high school, I was interested in business administration, and that's what I started out at UC in.

I became interested in politics when I met my husband.

- Politics was never on my radar screen at all, but I enjoyed people.

I really enjoyed being around people.

I was a cheerleader in elementary school, I was a cheerleader in high school, and I got to go to college on a cheerleading scholarship back in the sixties.

In those days, they probably would've thought they would try to give me some medicine to calm me down, but they kept you busy.

So I took baton lessons, I played violin.

I also played piano because that was important to the funeral business to be able to, if they needed somebody to play the piano, I could do that.

Whatever they could find for me to do, I was doing it.

- [Marcy] I was the editor of our yearbook, co-editor with another woman.

I loved journalism.

I learned what an important experience that was to be able to lay out messages and to write stories.

And then I went to an all girls high school, Saint Ursula.

The sisters took us to Washington.

I'd never been to Washington.

And I have a picture in front of the US Capitol.

I never ever thought.

I mean, it wasn't even in my mind that someday I would be in Congress.

- I grew up on a farm.

In fact, I was born just 10 years after voting for women became possible.

Well, I was always very interested in politics.

I couldn't wait until I could vote, and I couldn't vote until I was 21.

I remember when Truman ran, I wanted to vote so bad for him and I couldn't.

I wasn't old enough.

- I had three older brothers who really, my father couldn't interest them in going to political events with him.

And so he would take me with him.

When I was eight, nine, 10, take me to the railroad station when our candidate for president was coming through town.

And so that I think stuck with me as I grew a little older because I had been exposed to it at an early age.

And I realized for my father, that was a very important thing to him is that you should have some realization of the political system.

- I can remember our father, when he'd come home from work, he'd sit us on his lap and he'd watch the evening news.

And when the political conventions would come on, he would make us be quiet.

And we thought, those are so boring.

What is he listening to?

But we knew from them that it was important.

They were our most important teachers.

- I was the oldest of five and my father was involved in politics, and it absolutely fascinated me.

And so I would go with him to all these dinners and events.

He was on city council, et cetera.

And I really liked it.

What I discovered was I had more fun behind a camera or behind the scenes than at a podium or working a room.

- My father was a county committee person, but he never ran for anything else.

They'd ask him many times to run for office, but he said that's how you lose your friends.

(laughs) - The interesting thing is that my whole family, from my grandfather, my grandfather started a business in 1932.

And so we're funeral directors by generations.

And one of the things that I had learned at Parsons College from just observing the other kids, that if your family was fortunate enough to have a business, then you owed a duty and responsibility to go home, take that business and make it more.

And so my dad's political career really started when I finally took over the business.

So me being in politics, and I just saw what all he went through, and I didn't wanna be bothered with that.

But then I saw how he helped people.

- [Helen] Well, I came to Cincinnati in 1955, and I was staying with my aunt and uncle because I thought I could do better here after I graduated from high school.

I entered the University of Cincinnati for about a year, a little over, and then I went into a business school.

- When I went to Kent State University in the late 1960s and early '70s, it was a very tumultuous time.

And I ended up on house council in a very large dorm.

And then I ended up president of my dorm.

And I remember we had hours for women.

Women had to be in at one o'clock on the weekends and 10 o'clock on the weeknights.

I thought that was absurd.

Why were the guys allowed to run around and we weren't?

So I staged my first protest.

And I had a whole group of young women who were gonna stand with me outside the dorm when they locked the doors.

I was the only person standing there.

(laughs) And one of the things that happened at Kent shortly thereafter was the hours for women were absolved.

- In about the junior year, the Vietnam War, 1965, 1966, was the most complicated unresolved war of my generation when they were young.

During that era, Martin Luther King was assassinated.

There were riots across our country.

Cities were burned.

This was all new.

I was on campus in those days.

For the war in Vietnam we had students demonstrating against the war, right?

We were teargassed in our classes.

I'd never been teargassed in my life.

We had to run, we had to run away from the tear gas, and trying to understand, "what is happening to our country?"

So you couldn't grow up unless you were completely unconscious during those decades and not realize that politics was searing you permanently.

All those things had tremendous influence on me.

- Well, actually it got sparked in Whitehall.

We moved in next to a rabid Democrat, and he was running for Whitehall City Council.

I'm pretty competitive.

Growing up with three brothers makes you kind of competitive.

I thought if he can do that, then I should be involved with my political party.

So I became involved with the Franklin County Republican Party, took that involvement with me when we moved to Reynoldsburg.

And had a lot of good friends, all men who were running for city council.

So probably for the first five years I did a lot of political work.

It was sort of one of these things that the light bulb went on and I thought, let's see.

I am making the phone calls, I am putting up the yard signs, I am sponsoring the coffees, I am walking door-to-door.

And all of a sudden I thought, why don't I try to elect myself?

Because I wasn't particularly happy with what they were doing.

They might show up at a meeting every two years when you had to run again, so I was a little bit critical of that.

I was raising two daughters, very active in schools.

And so I just decided that I would try to put in.

- I wanted to do neighborhood planning because I wanted to work in community and to help them in their neighborhoods, and Toledo was so resistant to that.

The first meeting I ever had, I was the only woman.

You asked me, I went out to Lucas County.

My first meeting was to meet with the farmers in the Monclova region, and I remember walking in here, I was about, I don't know, 26 years old or something, whatever it was, and they were all sitting like this.

And I thought, oh my.

Here we are to talk about how we're going to do a plan for this township, which we ultimately did.

In the middle of the meeting, the fire bell rang.

They were all volunteer firemen for their township, and they all left the meeting.

So I thought, well, I guess we gotta schedule this differently.

- I had two teachers come and ask me to run for school board.

Of course there were no women on the school board and I had never thought of the idea myself.

Five men ran against me.

Every time a man got in the race, I'd get nervous and my husband would say, "Don't you think you could beat them?"

And he'd give me encouragement, and he always encouraged me to do whatever I wanted to.

I decided to go door-to-door.

That had never been done.

And I would hear the same thing every time.

There should be a woman on the school board.

So that was my theme.

And I won, and I was on the board for four years.

- I was so afraid to make a decision because I thought it would ruin my life.

I'd make the wrong decision and then I couldn't go back and repair it.

I would start down a path that I couldn't get back off of.

So I waitressed for about a year and a half until I decided to go to law school.

When I went to law school, there were only a handful of us at the time, and I was going to school at night.

I can still remember my criminal law professor making the women in the class, there were only a handful of us, stand up and define all the sex terms 'cause he wanted to toughen us up.

And they just in many ways didn't know what to do with us.

- [Marcy] I wanted to go to places that were working with people to redevelop their communities.

And so I was hired by the National Center for Urban Ethnic Affairs, which sent me into many places, including Chicago.

And I had to develop a planning office there for a community on the near northwest side of Chicago, right next to the Loop.

And I went in there and did that plan about revitalizing that part of Chicago and let the people who live there stay there.

Where I worked in the White House on urban legislation trying to do what the president wanted, to replicate what we did in Chicago in thousands of places across this country.

And then I tried to get that legislation through his staff.

It was impossible.

And the program we wanted to do, which would've been a $400 million program, they turned into a $15 million program at HUD.

(dramatic inspiring music) - By the time I got out of law school, I knew I wanted to be a prosecutor.

My classmates were law clerks or bailiffs.

Particularly as a woman, I knew it was necessary just to get that kind of experience.

So I went down my freshman year, my first year, and I applied and I was told that they didn't hire women for male law judges.

They only hired women for women judges.

Now in the seventies, there weren't very many women judges.

There was one woman judge on the bench of nine judges.

But I practiced the rule our parents had raised us.

Be polite, but be persistent.

So every, you know, month, six weeks, I would go down and say, have you got, is there an opening?

And she must have said something to Judge Robert Franklin, who had an opening, and he was converting his criminal clerk to a secretary.

And that's the second rule, is the side door is still an entrance.

So he asked me if I could type, and I said, "Well, of course I can type.

Got my 50 minute pin, 50 words a minute pin."

Well, within three weeks I was a criminal clerk.

- I met Jimmy, my husband, through a friend.

We struck up a conversation and we were together for 13 years before he passed.

Then I went into the legislature because he was in the legislature and he had been there for like seven years.

The speaker asked me if I wanted it, and if I wanted it, I could have it.

And so I chose to take it because I had three young people that I had to take care of.

And I was, at the time, I was working at the library, and that was not gonna help me raise those kids, so I needed another income.

So I decided to take the seat and that's how I became a legislator.

- I thought, okay, now what?

I'm gonna go back and get my doctorate.

I'm gonna teach the younger generation how to do development where people, ordinary people, like the families I came from, would really benefit.

And what happened was Monsignor Geno Baroni tried to recruit me to run for Congress.

And I said, "Well, how much does it cost to run for Congress?"

(laughing) He said, I don't remember, 300,000.

I said, "$300,000?"

I said our whole family isn't worth $300,000.

I have to work for a living, you know?

And one of my friends says, "Well, how much does your tuition cost?

Can you get a tuition rebate?"

I said, "Well, I suppose, but."

And to make a long story short, I ended up coming in for an interview here, and I got the endorsement because I knew everybody.

I knew everybody locally.

We were all from the working class.

We never thought we could elect anybody from humble roots.

Every other congressman had come from wealth going way back in our, you know, looking at it.

So this was a real, this was a real giant step.

- I became the city prosecutor.

Then I worked with a lot of highway patrol.

So now I have the whole range of law enforcement in Northwest Ohio.

The former speaker of the house, his name's Charles Kurfess, who ran in a primary against James Rhodes, and had as a running mate a woman at a time when that didn't happen ever.

He encouraged women.

And so he called me and he said, "Would you like to run for county prosecutor?"

Of course I will.

A lot of the parties said, well, you can't have a woman run for office.

She's not gonna win.

There's no county prosecutors in Ohio that are old women.

You can't have a woman run for, you know, they have to be tough, you know.

- You know, they didn't think that I had the experience.

I didn't know.

I was just someone that knew nothing about the job.

But they did not understand that my husband was the kind of person that we talked.

We communicated very well.

There would be situations that he would be involved in and he would come home and we'd talk about it.

And a lot of times he would ask me, you know, to help him decide on something.

He also would have me doing a lot of his communication.

I will say that I did not know the full extent of the job, but I did know enough to get in there and learn.

When I was asked by the speaker to take the position, my husband had not finished his term.

He had another year in his term, the terms were two years.

I was appointed to that to finish his term out.

And that was a controversial thing in the community, too, whether or not I was going to run once the term was out.

But I prevailed.

(bright piano music) I was there eight years before another Black woman came in, and she came in from Cleveland.

Then after she came in, Rhine McLin came in.

We had a pretty nice little group there.

But I had a problem, not with the legislatures as a whole, I had problems being the only Black female, and there were 12 Black men there.

And their thing was, well, you know, we trying to get ours, and here you come.

They were doing fairly well, but they did not want me there going through and getting things done and they couldn't get done because, you know, they had problems, too.

They knew I was there and I wasn't going anywhere.

So they eased up and we were all friends after a while.

- This is the 1990s.

I'm running for office.

And when you look at the political hierarchy, there is white men, Black men, white women, then Black women.

So a Black man would probably have had stood a better chance than a Black woman.

- But there were white women there that we really kind of grouped together, and they accepted me without any problem whatsoever.

So I didn't have a problem with them, but my major problem there was the Black men.

- The people wanted their leader to represent them.

And especially within the African American community, they expect for their leaders to look leader.

90% of before somebody would hear you is how you looked, and running, especially running for mayor, people wanted to know that you look serious enough for us to consider you to be in a serious position.

And I added to it, you know.

I started wearing hats and all that kind of crazy stuff because that was just me, because I was wearing hats from being a mortician.

- When I was a mayor and Governor Celeste came to Marietta, I learned a lesson.

So the governor was doing his farewells and I slipped out, and I took my shoes off and I was carrying them down the alley.

And there were all kinds of pictures taken of Mayor Nancy carrying her shoes down the alley.

And I knew that was going to be a headline in the paper.

And I was so furious because I had worked so hard to present this incredible facade to the Governor of The State of Ohio.

I learned how, okay, ride with it.

You better start laughing, because I probably received 150 different pairs of shoes, from combat boots to slippers to ballet shoes to high heels.

I sold those shoes at a local charity auction for $300.

So, lessons learned.

- They'd use things that were effective against a woman.

When I was running for clerk of courts, they said I wouldn't have time to do that because I had four children.

They said I wouldn't be able to open the vault.

(laughs) And like I wouldn't be strong enough to open the door.

Then one morning I couldn't open the vault because the maintenance person had washed down the front of the vault and froze the tumblers.

(laughs) And so I kind of laughed about that.

- And I remember going in and the accountant goes, "Well, I gotta tell ya, this campaign is sure different than the others we've done."

I said, "Why is that?"

They said, "Quarters?

Dollars?

You know, we don't deal in cash, right?

We get big checks."

But we were doing lunches.

We were trying to raise money any way.

I would go to a meeting and we'd pass a hat, you know?

We would try to get donations that way.

And then I went to visit other organizations, other unions, other people.

- I had one union that wasn't going to support me.

And I asked, I went to the main person.

I said, "What percentage of your union is women?"

And he said, "54%."

I said, "How are they gonna feel if you don't support the only woman on the ticket?"

And so I got his support.

I worked very hard with the union people because I'm a strong supporter of unions.

- I remember my last door that I knocked on, and I said, "My name's Betty Montgomery, I'm running for county prosecutor.

I greatly appreciate your vote."

You know, whatever.

He looked at me and said, "You don't think Wood County's gonna vote for a woman for county prosecutor, do you?"

Really?

The challenge was just convincing the electorate that you could do it.

- Women are given much more flexibility in today's world.

So it's not why, you know, it's not perhaps the doors that I knocked on that would say, "Why aren't you home taking care of your children?"

I hope you don't get that anymore.

In fact, the "Dispatch" ran a headline, "Is She Tough Enough To Govern?"

I'm trying to think of how they described me.

A soft-spoken, grandmotherly-looking woman, and that's when it was the big headline.

Is she tough enough to be?

So that was my challenge to prove that I was tough enough to be speaker.

Someplace along the way, I'm not quite sure that it was in that session or another session where things just got, started to get out of hand.

If you were calling on somebody, you had a map of the seating, it was covered with glass.

So someplace during the session, things began to get out of hand and I hammered down the gavel and the glass broke and it just went everyplace.

It flew down the clerk's back of his neck.

I didn't intend to do that.

But after that, nobody really asked me whether I was tough enough to govern, so maybe a short approach.

(gentle piano music) - After getting married and going to the University of Virginia where my husband was a student, and then returning to Marietta after he was in law school in Case, and starting our family, a friend of mine was running for city council.

I said, "Let me help.

We need to get some women on council."

And I helped run her campaign.

She won.

Six months later there was a vacancy on city council, and I got this phone call.

Would you please come and talk to us?

Oh, no, no, I'm not doing that.

I have four children.

I ended up getting drafted to do it, and I've loved every minute of it.

And I finished that term and decided to run for city council.

My first city council race involved me being very pregnant, and it was running at large.

But I never thought about that.

And I was always, I was never a tiny pregnant woman.

We were at a senior citizen's luncheon and we were all squeezed into these tables, and they introduced candidates, and they introduced me.

As I stood up, I caught my stomach on the table and dumped everything on the floor.

And well, you need to laugh and smile, and what are you gonna do?

We have all of these incredible things.

I had a playpen at council chambers.

Children were a great way to ease tensions in committee meetings, and mine were pretty ornery.

- I'd always said when I left city council, I'm not doing any more political office.

But the opportunity presented itself.

Somebody who was running for the district that I lived in dropped off of the ballot.

And so come August of that year, there was no candidate.

By that time, I had been deeply involved in the county Republican Party.

I chaired the central committee, I had been county chairwoman, and I couldn't get endorsed by my party to run.

So doing a little bit of research, which is always a good thing to remember, I looked at the constitution, and the constitution says if there's a vacancy, then only the central committee members from the area that's involved in creating the vacancy, which would've been a house district, have the right to name somebody to the ballot.

I'm gonna be named to the ballot whether you endorse me or not, and let it go at that.

But that was another good political lesson.

- I thought, we'll sell something, and we will do like a big event, which is common in politics, right?

They have spaghetti dinners and different things.

And so we decided to have like a Polish dinner, and that we would sell coffee cakes.

And we formed this bake sale committee, and that's where that kind of developed, because we knew it would be big, but we just didn't know how big.

So that kind of became my army.

But the unions helped us.

The women church people helped us.

The people who'd never been involved in politics, the Latino community, Baldemar Velazquez and all of the settled out migrants, they threw parties for me.

They were, so many people helped us.

It was quite unusual.

And we were criticized in Washington, you know.

"What does she think, she's running for the school board?

You know, this is Congress, right?

This is Congress."

Oh, that's a whole 'nother story.

It was so hopeful.

It was just so, so hopeful.

Two women came in to help me who were in Congress, Congresswoman Mary Rose Oakar from Cleveland, Ohio.

And she has just the greatest sense of humor.

She's still living, and feisty as ever.

And she said, "When I saw all those volunteers, I knew you were gonna win."

- In running for mayor, there was such soft pushback on, are you sure you should do this?

And the seat was open.

I was a sitting member of council, and these three gentlemen who had absolutely no experience whatsoever wanted to run.

But I was absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, the most qualified.

Jeff's comment to me was, "Good grief, you're spending every day down there anyway.

Why don't you run for mayor?"

It had nothing to do with being a woman or whatever.

It was I knew I could do the job.

And I knew city government.

I knew where the problems were, where the positives were.

My family was very supportive.

I focused on, "these are community issues."

It's not about women, it's not about men, it's not, it's about this community.

And it's about a bicentennial celebration.

It's about trying to get a $28 million bridge and it's about listening and funding and things like that.

And I think that served me very well.

The general elections were not a problem.

Primaries are difficult.

- I'd run my second term unopposed, and I was running my third term unopposed.

And women tend to need to be recruited rather than to put themselves out.

And I was one of those, I need to be recruited.

I remember going to bed and saying, well, if I lose it, I won't have a job.

But what will I think of myself in 20 years?

Will it be an if only moment?

I shouldn't be afraid.

And so I jumped into a four-way primary.

What was it like?

You know, you still had to deal with a lot of good old boys.

And one of my rules is, you know, if you can be the best prepared in the room, it's hard for them to demean you.

And if they tried to demean you, you have the facts on your side.

- Those are the kind of things that you had to contend with because what they wanted you to only be concerned with like daycare or something that they felt were women's issues.

Not if I was interested in business.

I mean, I was served on agriculture.

They did not see you being in those kind of areas.

You know, you got married, you had kids, and you went off into another life, somebody took care of you.

You know, they never saw you in that particular role.

So at the end of the day, when he looked around, there was nobody left but me.

I was shocked as he was choosing me to take his seat.

I mean, you're talking about C.J.

McLin Jr.?

A 22-year legislator?

And he's looking at his daughter?

They were probably disappointed that he had chose me because nobody ever saw me.

I was always the person who sat by the door.

Nobody ever even noticed I was around.

You know, I just ran the business, and, you know, I was a girl.

And they did not see me as being viable for this position.

Not that I didn't have the background or base or anything like that.

It was just the times, a sign of the times.

And then because you're appointed, you gotta run.

And then after that I, I mean I just worked hard.

I had once a month I would have constituent days where anybody in the district could come and see me, and I would have the proper people there to address their issues.

So I became a peoples representative like my dad.

(soft inspiring music) - My mammography legislation did take a while to get through.

It had to go through the insurance committee, the committee that where there were, and there were people sitting on the insurance committee that were involved with insurance.

At that time, insurance companies didn't, was refusing to add anything.

I would get it so far and it would be held back.

So I spoke to the speaker about it, and the speaker told me that just let him work with it for a while.

And so the speaker attacked him on the floor and said, "I want that bill out tomorrow."

And so we got the bill out and it passed.

And then it didn't have a problem over in the Senate because there were some legislators over there that was interested in it, too, some female.

But the men, they were against it.

And you know, when you're in a situation where it's all men or 99% men and it's something about women, you have a hard time getting it through because they don't see what you see, and they think that you're just frivolously asking for something.

- One of the people that I had come to know during a tenure as mayor was George Voinovich.

I admired and respected him as a fantastic mayor of Cleveland, and just enjoyed the things he had done.

And so when he was running for governor, there was no doubt that I supported him, and supported him as loudly as I possibly could.

And he called and said, "I don't have a director for the Governor's Office of Appalachia.

Would you head up the evaluations and send me some names of people you think would be good directors?"

And I get this phone call that says, "he rejects your names."

I said, "well, okay, I need to talk to him because any one of these three people would do a great job."

"He would like you to do it."

And I said, "no.

Oh that, no.

Thank you, but no."

And I discussed this with my husband and my family, and he called me and said, "I really want you to do this because I think you could be a strong voice.

I take nothing away from the people that you selected."

So I took the job, and in fact I took our first recommendation as my number two.

- That was in the election of '92.

And there hadn't been a vacancy in the minority leader's position, you know, since I had been in the legislature.

I'm pretty much a person that says wait your turn.

But I had waited a lot of times through the years for my turn, and this one I thought was important for the caucus, so there was a contested race for minority leader, and I managed to win.

By then I chaired the campaign committee from '85 until '92, and we had been gaining ground and I was still focused, quite frankly, on the trying to see if I could get us into the majority.

I felt that I had the skills to do the job.

And frankly I felt also that I had the relationships with the members to be able to do that.

But it was a contested election.

- Jo Ann Davidson was a joy to work with and invaluable to work with as Speaker of the House because she could, she knew her caucus, she knew how to get things done, work through different issues.

We got a lot done during those first two years in large part because of her leadership in the House.

And then she was the interim director of one of the largest departments in state government, the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services.

And sometimes I refer to Jo Ann as my guardian angel because she's always there when I need her, and she was invaluable to my own success.

- Where was my trajectory?

Was I planning all of this?

No.

People came to me and said would you think about running?

The year that I ran, George Voinovich was at the top of the ticket and Rob Burch was running as Democrat.

And so you had the advantage of all these Republicans who were gonna come out and vote, and the Democrats being discouraged 'cause there was no campaign at the top of the ticket.

At the same time, nobody gave me a chance, but we were a lot of fun.

We used humor.

Again, I don't think you have to be nasty about it.

I had a very skeletal team 'cause we didn't have any money.

- [Bob] Betty Montgomery came up as an attorney.

She took on a very tough race when she defeated the incumbent Attorney General Lee Fisher, who then turned out to be my opponent for governor.

But Lee Fisher was a very well established attorney general.

That was a tough race.

She was one of those leaders who understand, can understand the public policies, but also are willing to get their hands and feet dirty in politics and do what it takes.

- At the end of the day, I won.

I didn't win just, I did my job, and I beat him anyway, but there was all sorts of things going on that, you know, you have a great campaign, you had a lot of people giving you money at the last minute, George Voinovich being one of them, to help you get across the line.

You had the national, you had all sorts of things when helping you win.

And that's the one thing, you know, you should learn is that you never win in a vacuum.

You win because of a lot of things that aren't you.

It was more of a you can't beat Lee Fisher 'cause he's got too much money and he's an incumbent and he's, you know, he's from Cleveland and you're from Northwest Ohio and "oh no, it's you."

And there were a lot of other things.

Woman was down on the bottom of the list, you know?

- I said, "doesn't it make sense to elect a treasurer to be treasurer?"

All of the other people running in the primary had never been treasurer.

And so I used that, and I said, "You shouldn't have to be rich to run for public office."

I had all these different things I would use in my speeches, and people would relate to.

And it worked out.

(chuckles) It's a totally different job.

As state treasurer, you know, I was responsible for a lot of money.

I'm talking about $87 billion.

And when I became US treasurer, I didn't have that anymore.

I was manufacturing money.

I just really enjoyed it.

I said I tried to sign money as much as possible when I had a chance over at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, and I would meet people from all over the world.

And when I had extra time, I would go and visit other departments because I said the federal government is so immense that there is so much to know about it that I wanted to learn all I could while I was there.

- Being the Director of the Governor's Office of Appalachia, and having Governor Voinovich being so supportive, he would at least on three different projects, we would fly to a groundbreaking or an opening because he wanted to talk to folk.

He wanted to see what the projects were all about.

So we were on the plane and he said, "Nance, I think I'm gonna pick a woman as my running mate."

And my comment to him at the time was, "It's about damn time."

And we were walking down the runway and he said, "I would like you to do it."

Oh.

I said, "No, I'm not telling you yes, no, or maybe so.

I love you dearly, but I need to think about this."

He said, "Okay."

And I was quite frankly surprised.

It wasn't anything I ever aspired to.

That was a very tough decision for me as mom.

So, I wasn't sure.

And I went to the grocery store.

I came home and my son Justin said, "Hey, some man called and said it was the governor."

I said, "What did you tell him?"

"Oh, I told him Mom was at the grocery store."

- Giving advice to young women who are interested in going into politics, that you need to be financially secure.

The first thing you need to ask yourself, do I know 10 people that would give me $100?

And not even, because they believe in me so much, they're not gonna even ask what's it for.

That I'm saying I'm running for office, they're willing to give it to you.

- I've worked with so many men in my career at different times, and it seems to me that many of the young men sort of have outlined for themselves by the time I'm 24, I want to do this, by the time I'm 26, I wanna do.

They've sort of outlined what their goals are.

My experience as a woman and watching other women is that we sort of weave.

We don't have a straight line.

We sort of weave through it.

And sometimes it depends upon decisions that you make as far as marriage and a family, and then you have to work around that.

- It was women at that time that said, how about your children?

What are you gonna do about your children?

Number one, the fact that I was a mom.

Number two, the fact that I was a woman.

It was like, oh, come on, people.

We can get this done.

I never had even considered that because it was really a family decision that I do this.

- [Mary Ellen] I remember my husband saying, you know, I was talking about running for state treasury.

He said, "What all do you wanna run for?"

I said, "I wanna go to the top."

And, (laughs) and I know he looked at me kind of funny.

He said, "Really?"

And I said, "Oh, yes."

I had no idea that I would go to the top.

You can't just pretend you're running for office.

You gotta work like crazy.

I was so tired so many times that I, you know, you'd just be exhausted.

You think you couldn't go another step, and you just had to keep going.

(soft bright music) - Let us make it possible for every single Ohio child to succeed, like Jennette Bradley or John Glenn or Neil Armstrong.

Let us seize the special opportunity that is ours to act boldly and decisively at a time when the eyes of our fellow citizens, both present and future, are upon us.

It's been my honor and pleasure to serve with three amazing women.

Lieutenant Governor Jennette Bradley, and the first woman to serve as Speaker of the House, Jo Ann Davidson, and also Attorney General and State Auditor, Betty Montgomery.

So I feel just privileged to have had the opportunity to serve along with them and to have them as my partners in various endeavors in state government.

As I begin a new term, I'm honored to have a new partner, a member of our cabinet, our director of commerce, and Ohio's new lieutenant governor, and she's gonna do a terrific job, Jennette Bradley.

(group applauding) Well, at that time, running for reelection, we were anticipating that a Democrat representing an urban area would probably be running.

So we actually did look to the cities for potential running mates to deal with the urban development challenges across Ohio.

I had created a urban revitalization task force with mayors, and we were making a real effort to broaden our base of the Republican Party across Ohio.

So it's not just suburban, not just rural at the time, but also making a strong appeal to the cities because that's where so many of our citizens live.

And the cities actually have major problems and major issues.

Jennette Bradley was a natural, and we knew that she had not only the city council presence, but also the business community experience in having worked for Huntington National Bank for a long period of time.

So she brought a lot of assets to the ticket.

- I did not plan a career in public service when I entered East High School or Wittenberg University, but looking back, no one could have predicted that Ohio would make history in its bicentennial year as the home of our nation's first African-American woman to serve as lieutenant governor.

From my earliest days with the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority and through 11 years on Columbus City Council, I have long been committed to public service.

I believe it is through public service that we can make a difference.

It's how we touch each other's lives, how we make our communities and our state better for the benefit of all.

- When I appointed her treasurer of the state of Ohio, and there had been some problems with potential corruption before her, so she had to really clean up that office and manage it very professionally.

You're investing billions and billions of dollars of state funds, and she really did an admirable job of bringing modern efficient banking practices into the state treasurer's office.

- Treasury employees and I make a commitment today that we will work hard every day to make the Ohio's treasurer's office the best it can possibly be and one that is worthy of your support and trust every day.

Since our state was admitted to the Union nearly 200 years ago, millions of people have called Ohio home.

But out of all of those people, just 44 have preceded me in the office of Treasurer of State.

Our mission for the treasurer's office is clear.

Collect, invest, and protect state funds.

And we must always, always remember that the money comes from the people of Ohio.

- She was a leader who was prepared to take responsibility for major parts of state government, like the Department of Commerce, like the State Treasurer's Office, and carry out those duties.

So that was her background, that was her training, and that was her attitude.

- To the people of Ohio, I thank you for your support.

I feel privileged to serve you and a state that stands out as a shining star full of opportunity and promise.

Thank you, and may God bless America.

(audience applauding) - Politics was never on my radar.

My grandfather had been, my grandfather had run for city commission, and back in that time they poured acid on the sidewalk where we lived.

They had a newspaper article come out with a black hand.

They tried to paint my grandfather as a communist.

For mayor was a vindication, not only for coming back home, but also for my grandfather.

I'm running against a white male Republican.

He's a lawyer.

In fact, when I was in Columbus at the time, you know, running back and forth to run, one of the guys told me, they said, "You know, they just see you as a little gnat to get on his nerves."

And it was a race down.

I mean, I went to bingo halls, motorcycle clubs.

I went to all the places that normally people don't campaign because I wanted the people to know that I was gonna be a mayor for the people.

- [Marcy] The bill to create the World War II Memorial in Washington, the most important memorial of the 20th century is the bill that we did.

We worked on that for 17 years.

The idea for the World War II Memorial came from a veteran, Roger Durbin, in this county.

This county did something for the country.

That memorial now has been visited by 65 million people.

- My major bill was mammography legislation, and I did get that through after about two or three terms.

And so that was my major accomplishment there.

But most of my work was done on the local level with my constituents.

- When I became US treasurer, they only told me to do one thing: talk about saving money.

And so this program saved money.

Everybody was saving their quarters, and we had to produce more dimes and nickels because of that.

It was a great program for the children.

It was a big success.

- I knew that there would be an undercurrent of, well, you can't do it.

But I also didn't really care.

- [Bob] Betty Montgomery reaching a settlement with them, that resulted in very substantial, you know, millions and millions, hundreds of millions of dollars to Ohio, that was one of the first times that I think attorney generals started to become involved in those kinds of national lawsuits against companies.

You see that more and more nowadays.

But she was, you know, one of the leaders in that among attorney generals across the country.

- It was very exciting because I knew when he won the election from November that by law he needed to resign to be sworn into the Senate.

So he said, "ah, another history for you, Hollister."

It was very structured, being 11 days.

I had to make a number of appointments.

I had to sign bills.

We had a hostage situation in Hamilton County that was handled, but it was pins and needles for a while.

There was a blizzard coming.

Are we ready for that with ODOT?

So every hour was structured.

My point during that time was don't rock the ship.

Keep things on course.

Deal with things that you need to deal with because Governor Taft will be coming in.

Don't make a mess he has to clean up.

- Nancy Hollister, of course, made history as serving as governor in the interim, but she was also a very effective state legislator.

And she was, you know, a strong advocate for southeastern Ohio and her part of the state.

And just also very accomplished as a success story, as a woman in Ohio politics.

- My biggest political accomplishment was being chosen the first woman to be Speaker of the House of Representatives.

And it's quite frankly, not just because it's me, it's because it sends a message out there.

It sends a message to women and particularly, you know, the young girls who are just becoming involved politically that you can do that, that you can do really anything that you set your mind to doing.

Going way back when I first started, obviously there weren't this many avenues open for women.

There weren't this many actually career paths open for women.

It was usually being a teacher, you know, or a secretary.

And now the whole world is open.

I felt strongly that actually leadership in major political bodies should be, have women, too.

- [Bob] With people like Jo Ann and Betty in the Republican Party, there's been a strong effort to recruit outstanding new women.

And you're familiar with the Jo Ann Davidson Leadership Institute, which does just that for up and coming Republican women to teach them how to be campaign leaders.

- I've devoted a lot of my time since leaving the legislature, quite frankly, to trying to work with women, to encourage them to seek leadership positions in their own communities, in their own organizations, but also to seek opportunities in public service.

- We believe that the government, which represents the authority of all the people, not just one interest group, but all the people, has an obligation to actively underscore, actively seek to remove those obstacles which will block individual achievement, obstacles emanating from race, sex, economic condition.

The government must remove them.

- I've always admired Barbara Jordan.

When she was elected the first Black state senator in Texas, somebody asked her, they said, "How do you feel about being elected the first Black state senator?"

She said, "I'm female, can't change that.

I'm Black, can't change that.

So I'm elected to serve the people.

Now that's what I'm here for."

- It was very difficult because people thought, you know, "a woman?

How could she do that?"

But I had developed support.

I worked every county fair.

I registered voters.

I still meet people I registered to vote back 40 years ago.

- My advice to women who are considering running for office or who should be considering running for office, never, never say, well, I'm not qualified to do that.

Because you underestimate yourself.

You have a genuine right to be sitting at the table or sitting at the desk, holding office.

- If you don't take a swing at bat, you're never gonna hit a home run.

What's the worst that could happen?

You're gonna lose.

Okay, but at least you tried.

- I used to say, "run for something you can win."

But you know, I thought back on all of my situations.

I don't think people thought I would win.

You run if you wanna run and run like the dickens.

(soft gentle music) - [Announcer] "Trailblazing Women in Ohio Politics" is brought to you in part by Dr. Maribeth S. and Martin E. Rahe, the Ohio History Fund, a program of the Ohio History Connection, Ohio Humanities, a state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities, Bowling Green State University, and by viewers like you.

Thank you.

For more information about these and other Trailblazing Women in Ohio Politics, visit our website, bgsu.edu/trailblazers.

(choir vocalizing "The Star Spangled Banner")