Category Archives: Politics

Tillie Fowler, whose roots in Florida politics ran deep, rose to become one of the highest-ranking Republican women in the House. Representative Fowler served on the influential Armed Services Committee, a key assignment since her district encompassed the Jacksonville naval facilities, before honoring a pledge to retire after four terms.

Tillie Kidd was born in Atlanta, Georgia, on December 23, 1942, daughter of Culver and Katherine Kidd. She was raised in a politically active family; her father served for more than 40 years in the Georgia state legislature. Kidd received an AB in political science from Emory University in 1964 and a JD from the Emory University School of Law in 1967; she was admitted to the bar that year. She moved to Washington, DC, to work as a legislative assistant to Representative Robert Grier Stephens Jr. of Georgia from 1967 to 1970. In 1968 she married L. Buck Fowler, and the couple lived in Washington as Tillie Fowler accepted a position as a counsel in the Richard M. Nixon White House Office of Consumer Affairs from 1970 to 1971. The Fowlers moved to Jacksonville in 1971, where they raised two daughters: Tillie Anne and Elizabeth. After more than a decade as a mother and housewife, Tillie Fowler re-entered politics. She was elected to the Jacksonville city council and served from 1985 to 1992 as its first female and, later, as its first Republican president in 1989 to 1990. She also served as chair of the Duval County tourism development council from 1989 to 1990 and chair of the Florida Endowment for the Humanities from 1989 to 1991.

In 1992, when Democrat Charles Edward Bennett, a 22-term Representative, announced his retirement from the House, Fowler entered the race for the northeast Florida seat, which encompassed Jacksonville and portions of St. Johns and Duval counties. Her opponent in the general election was Mattox Hair, a prominent state legislator. With a well-financed campaign that focused on congressional reform and term limits, Fowler won with 56 percent of the vote. She ran unopposed in the succeeding three elections. When she entered the 103rd Congress (1993–1995), Fowler was appointed to the Armed Services Committee and the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Fowler soon earned a reputation as a moderate conservative who supported budgetary restraint but approved of federal funding of abortions in rape cases, an increase in the minimum wage, and federal funds for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Fowler advocated an overhaul of the welfare system, which she described as “anti-family” in 1993. She also championed increased federal funding for women’s health care and cancer research.

Having first been elected to Congress in the “Year of the Woman,” Fowler believed that women would have a unique impact on the institution but cautioned that most problems could not be solved through the lens of gender. “I think as mothers, home-workers, as people who usually had to juggle a lot of different priorities, we get pretty good at that. I think we bring a different view to issues such as child care,” Fowler said at the time. “But I also don’t believe that there is any one set of issues that is just women’s issues because I think women’s perspective is needed in defense; that’s one of the reasons I wanted to be on the Armed Services Committee. I think women are all concerned with defense issues and I think our perspective is needed there.”

On the Armed Services Committee, Fowler became a regular critic of the William J. (Bill) Clinton administration’s defense budgets and foreign policy during the 1990s. As defense budgets were trimmed in the post-Cold War years, Fowler maintained that the cuts were so deep that they affected the military’s core capabilities. Much of her concern came as a Representative with a heavy naval presence in her district, including the Mayport Naval Station and facilities in Jacksonville. She pointed out that defense cuts occurred at a time when the military’s mission had been expanded into peacekeeping and humanitarian causes. Fowler also dissented from the Clinton administration’s policy in the Balkans. She twice visited American troops in the region, praising their work but criticizing the open-ended goals of Washington policymakers who, she said, were attempting an experiment in “nation-building.” A longtime opponent of deploying American troops to Bosnia, Fowler nonetheless did not underestimate the significance of U.S. relations with the Balkan nation. “I have supported the involvement of our sea and air forces, our intelligence and logistics assets, and our most diligent diplomatic efforts,” she commented. “But I have never felt that our interests were so vital that they warranted putting our ground troops at risk.”

Fowler rose quickly through the ranks of the Republican Party. She served as a Deputy Whip in the 105th Congress (1997–1999). In the 106th Congress (1999–2001) she won election as vice chair of the GOP Conference, the fifth-ranking Republican position in the House. It made her the highest-ranking woman in the party. During that Congress she also rose to chair the Transportation Subcommittee on Investigations and Emergency Management.

Fulfilling her 1992 campaign pledge to retire after four terms, Fowler did not seek re-election to the 107th Congress (2001–2003). At the time, the move was widely praised as a highly ethical decision, in no small measure because Fowler made it despite her high profile in the Republican leadership. “I take great pride in the fact that we not only changed Congress, but we changed America,” Fowler said upon announcing her retirement.

In 2001 Fowler joined a Washington, DC-based law firm. In May 2004, Secretary of Defense Donald Henry Rumsfeld appointed Fowler as one of four members of an independent panel to investigate abuse of Iraqi prisoners of war. The panel recommended a sweeping overhaul of the U.S. military’s procedures for the handling of prisoners. On February 28, 2005, Fowler suffered a brain hemorrhage while in Jacksonville. She died two days later on March 2.

Water, liquor, and communism stirred Virginia Ellis Jenckes’s considerable passions and spurred her into elective politics, where she unseated a 16-year veteran Congressman to become the first Indiana woman to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. Jenckes’s expressions of commitment to creating flood control for her constituents, abolishing Prohibition, and routing communist influences from American society made her one of the more colorful Washington politicians during the New Deal.

Virginia Ellis Somes was born on November 6, 1877, in Terre Haute, Indiana, to James Ellis, a pharmacist, and Mary Oliver Somes. She attended public schools in Terre Haute and took one year of coursework at Coates College.1 In 1912 Virginia Somes married Ray Greene Jenckes, a Terre Haute businessman 34 years her senior.2 A year later, Virginia Jenckes gave birth to a daughter, Virginia. The couple operated a 1,300-acre family farm along the banks of the Wabash River in western Indiana. Ray Jenckes died in 1921, leaving his widow to manage the farm and raise their child.

Flooding posed a constant problem in western Indiana. In 1927 a new dike along the Wabash River failed, threatening lives and Jenckes’s $15,000 crop. She mobilized local residents and participated in a 3,000-sandbag effort that successfully contained the breach. That experience led her to found and serve as secretary and lobbyist for the Wabash and Maumee Valley Improvement Association, an organization that proposed flood control programs and projects. In 1928 Jenckes achieved a major political triumph when party leaders adopted one of her association’s flood control plans into the Democratic national platform.3 Success emboldened Jenckes, and within several years, she had committed herself to running for Congress.

In 1932 the road to Washington was not an easy one. A year earlier, reapportionment had reshuffled Indiana politics, leaving Jenckes the task of ousting two incumbents. The new Indiana district, tucked along much of the western portion of the state that bordered Illinois, included 10 counties and Jenckes’s hometown. In the primary, she faced Democrat Courtland Craig Gillen, a one-term incumbent from Greencastle. Acting as her own campaign manager, Jenckes developed a simple strategy and platform: abolish Prohibition. “Get rid of Prohibition and you will have a market for your corn,” she told farmers.4 Prohibition had closed Terre Haute’s distilleries after 1919 and contributed to a slide in commodities prices that accelerated with the onset of the Great Depression. The message resonated in the presumed dry sections of the Indiana district. She also reminded the voters of her strong record and personal experience with flood control.5

In the Democratic primary in May 1932 she unseated Gillen. In the general election, her 19-year-old daughter, Virginia, chauffeured her on a speaking tour that logged 15,000 miles.6 Jenckes faced Fred Sampson Purnell, an eight-term incumbent, who had represented the northern counties prior to redistricting. Purnell, who voted down a proposal to loosen Prohibition laws in the 72nd Congress (1931–1933), found himself in the political battle of his life as the Democratic Party embraced the repeal of the legislation. Jenckes ultimately prevailed with 54 percent of the vote to Purnell’s 46 percent. In Indiana, the four GOP incumbents lost, and the state’s 12-seat House delegation went all-Democratic, thanks to presidential candidate Franklin D. Roosevelt’s (FDR’s) long coattails. Hoping to capitalize on farmers’ discontent with the Agricultural Adjustment Act (AAA), Purnell challenged Jenckes again in 1934. But she won by a hair’s breadth, polling just 383 more votes than Purnell out of 135,000 cast.7

Securing all-important committee assignments was another matter entirely. In 1933 Congresswoman Jenckes failed to persuade Democratic leaders to give her a seat on either the coveted Agriculture Committee or the Rivers and Harbors Committee, which would have given her the opportunity to effect change for her farming constituents through crop relief programs or flood control. Instead, she received assignments on three lower-tier committees: Mines and Mining; Civil Service; and District of Columbia.8 She kept the latter two assignments throughout her House career but dropped Mines and Mining after the 74th Congress (1935–1937). The District of Columbia Committee assignment brought plenty of work but few rewards, as it did not remotely benefit any of her constituents. Nevertheless, Jenckes devoted herself to giving DC voters a greater voice in their government, reducing the workload on city firefighters, and monitoring developments in city schools. In 1937 she became the first American woman appointed as a delegate to the Interparliamentary Union in Paris.9

During her first term, Jenckes made good on her promise to seek an end to Prohibition—a task made easier by a compliant Congress and President. One of her first House votes was to support the Cullen Beer Bill—allowing for the production, transportation, and sale of the beverage—which passed by a wide margin in March 1933.10 She also managed to secure $18 million in funding during the following Congress for a series of flood control projects along the Wabash River Basin.11

Jenckes emerged as an advocate for American veterans and workers. In one of her first floor speeches, she urged her colleagues to support a comprehensive “rehabilitation” program for U.S. veterans.12 A year later, Jenckes voted for the Patman Bill to extend a bonus to World War I veterans. She also encouraged Congress to adopt the Railroad Retirement Act, which nationalized rail workers’ pensions, an important step toward creating universal old-age pensions.13 Having voted for the first AAA to relieve drought and Depression-stricken farmers, Jenckes supported efforts to develop substitute legislation after the Supreme Court had invalidated the original act.14 Jenckes believed New Deal programs particularly affected women and that it was important that she was in Congress to speak for women’s interests. “For the first time in history, there’s an electric connection between Congress and the home,” Jenckes said.15

Though Jenckes broadly supported New Deal relief programs, her relationship with the Roosevelt administration was frosty. She had faith in her convictions but not always the requisite tact of a Washington insider. She believed FDR to be too conservative, too patrician, and too willing to subordinate the Democratic Party’s interests to his own “selfish ambitions.”16 Jenckes soon clashed with Harry Hopkins—one of President Roosevelt’s most trusted advisers, chief administrator of the Federal Emergency Relief Administration and director of the Works Progress (later Projects) Administration—over the disbursement of federal money in her district.17 While Jenckes embraced federal programs to ease her constituents’ economic burdens, she was more hesitant than other New Dealers about reinventing the role of government either in the direction of a planned economy or the creation of the welfare state. In 1934 she expressed concern that small factions of organized labor would use the National Industrial Recovery Administration as a vehicle to dominate certain trades.18 Despite her efforts to protect the retirements of many different American workers, Jenckes seemed ambivalent about the role government should play in that regard. She voted in 1935 for the Social Security Act, which established unemployment insurance and old-age pensions. As a senior citizen, however, she refused social security payments, noting, “I think when you give dole to people you take away their self respect.”19

With the implementation of the New Deal relief measures, Jenckes turned her attention to other matters. Her interest in stemming subversive activities in America dominated her work and made her something of a controversial figure in the nation’s capital. As a strong supporter of J. Edgar Hoover’s Federal Bureau of Investigation, she often defended the agency’s budget requests on the House Floor. She also was an unremitting anticommunist. When many government buildings were erected in the 1930s without flagpoles, Jenckes suspected a conspiracy and introduced a measure requiring that the Stars and Stripes be flown atop every federal building.20 Jenckes pursued her anticommunist crusade by using her seat on the District of Columbia Committee to expound on the dangers of communist indoctrination in the public schools. In 1935 she supported an amendment—later dubbed the “red rider”—to a DC appropriations bill which outlawed the teaching, advocacy, or mere mention of communism in the capital’s public schools.21 She locked horns with New York Representative Frederick James Sisson, who introduced an amendment to repeal the “red rider.” Sisson claimed that Jenckes made her allegations without “a scintilla of evidence.”22 Jenckes would not relent, however, warning that “Washington is the hotbed of international propagandists.”23 The dispute eventually brought Jenckes into conflict with other committee members, including Chairwoman Mary T. Norton of New Jersey. In May 1937, the House overwhelmingly repealed her amendment.

Jenckes’s tumultuous third term and growing resentment over New Deal programs foreshadowed a difficult 1938 re-election campaign. Noble Johnson, a former GOP Indiana Congressman, proved a formidable challenger. Johnson benefited from Jenckes’s inability to secure a key committee assignment, as well as public backlash against President Roosevelt’s failed “court packing plan.” Jenckes ran unopposed in the primary but lost the general election by a 1,755-vote margin. Seven of Indiana’s 12 House seats swung to GOP insurgents in 1938. After Jenckes’s defeat, New York Times editors noted that she had “served with distinction.”24

Retiring from Congress in early 1939, Jenckes settled in Washington, DC, where she volunteered extensively for the American Red Cross.25 She helped five priests escape Hungary during the 1956 uprising, setting up a behind-the-scenes network and funneling communist opposition messages to then-Secretary of Defense Charles E. Wilson. Late in life she returned to Indiana and eventually resettled in her native Terre Haute. After a long life of public service, Virginia Jenckes died in Terre Haute on January 9, 1975, at the age of 98.

Virginia Dodd Smith’s House career owed much to her 40 years on a Nebraska farm and experience as a spokesperson for agricultural issues. As the first woman elected to Congress from Nebraska, Smith steered federal money toward farm programs from her seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee. Widely popular in her state, she also exercised a great deal of influence on political developments there, both because of her western Nebraska district’s size and her personal connection with constituents, whom she visited regularly.

Virginia Dodd was born in Randolph, Iowa, on June 30, 1911, to Clifton Clark Dodd and Erville (Reeves) Dodd. She graduated from Shenandoah High School in Shenandoah, Iowa. Virginia Dodd met Haven Smith while attending the University of Nebraska. The two wed on August 27, 1931, taking a hiatus from school to earn tuition money. The Smiths settled in Chappell, Nebraska, in the western portion of the state near the Colorado border and worked on Haven’s family wheat farm during the depths of the Great Depression. They both returned to school and received their bachelor of arts degrees from the University of Nebraska in 1936. The Smiths eventually expanded their wheat farming business into poultry, seed potatoes, and other crops.1 From 1950 until 1960, Virginia Smith worked for the Home Economics Research Advisory Committee for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She became involved in a wide variety of farm organizations, such as the American Farm Bureau Federation (AFBF), spending 20 years on its board of directors and serving as the national chair of the AFBF women’s bureau from 1955 to 1974.

Meanwhile, Smith was active in the state’s Republican Party. Smith’s extensive participation in farming organizations and civic af fairs in Nebraska provided an invaluable network for her first run for elective office in 1974, when seven-term incumbent Republican David Thomas Martin retired from the U.S. House of Representatives. Martin represented what was then the nation’s largest congressional district, consisting of 61 counties and 307 towns spread over the western three-quarters of the state, an area dominated by the wheat, corn, and cattle businesses. A political observer described it as “one of the most macho districts” in America.2 It certainly was one of the most historically Republican regions. The farmers and ranchers of western Nebraska had voted for Republican House Members with only one significant interruption—from 1932 to 1942 during the heyday of the New Deal agricultural programs.

Name recognition in the massive district was no problem for Smith. Already a familiar face in many of the district’s small farm towns, she defeated eight candidates in the GOP primary. In the general election, Smith faced Democratic candidate Wayne W. Ziebarth, a former state senator. Ziebarth, too, had name recognition, after having run a statewide race in 1972 for the Democratic nomination to the U.S. Senate. Smith was a formidable campaigner who engaged individuals in the crowds in one-on-one conversations and had an “extraordinary” capacity for names, faces, and issues.3 She relied on the wholehearted support of her husband, Haven. “It was a two-person job,” Virginia Smith recalled. “He was just my righthand man all the way.”4 Ziebarth aided Smith’s cause when he made a crucial mistake late in his campaign, publicly stating that women were not cut out for politics.5 Smith defeated her opponent by a margin of just 737 votes out of more than 161,000 cast.6 When she took her seat in the 94th Congress (1975–1977), she did so as the first Nebraska woman elected to the U.S. House. In her subsequent bids for reelection, voters returned Smith to office for seven more terms by increasingly wider margins, from 73 to 84 percent of the vote.7

During Smith’s freshman year, she served on the Education and Labor and the Interior and Insular Affairs committees. In her second term in Congress, she managed to get a seat on the powerful Appropriations Committee— an assignment she held until her retirement in 1991. She served on two Appropriations subcommittees: Rural Development, Agriculture, and Related Agencies and Energy and Water Development. She also was assigned to the GOP policy committee in 1977, which advised House Republicans on key issues.

Throughout her tenure, Smith focused on agricultural matters. Fiscally conservative on most issues, she nevertheless routinely favored spending federal money on farm programs. As Ranking Member of the Rural Development, Agriculture, and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, she had a strong position from which to steer federal dollars into that sector, and into her district in particular. In 1984, for instance, more than $162 million in federal payments for corn growers flowed into her district, by far the largest amount of any other congressional district for a region that, in fact, produced more corn than any other in the nation.8

In 1987 she managed to exempt U.S. agriculture later, exporters from having to ship a certain percentage of their product on American vessels, which charged higher shipping costs. In 1989, as the United States began to send food aid to Eastern European countries emerging from communist rule, Smith was one of several midwestern Representatives to argue that the U.S. government should continue to allow shipments to be made on foreign vessels—at about one-third of the transportation rates on American-registered ships. The differential could then have been applied to buying more foodstuffs, which would have further benefited American farmers.9 Smith also supported the creation of more domestic land and air transportation routes, in order to keep rural America connected to urban centers. “The revitalization of rural America cannot and will not occur unless we guarantee mobility.”10 In a 1989 Appropriations Committee vote, her amendment to restore subsidies to airline companies as an incentive to fly to small towns was narrowly defeated, with the vote breaking down not along party lines, but between rural and urban legislators.11 In 1988 she helped secure federal funding for a bus line that connected remote parts of western Nebraska with South Dakota.12 That same year she also successfully fended off efforts to cut funding to the Davis Creek Dam which, when completed, would provide irrigation water in her district.13

Smith’s farming constituents showed their approval for her policies with her overwhelming success at the polls. “I think people know I fight very hard to get a fair share of federal revenues for Nebraska,” she once said. “I visit every one of the counties in my district every year and I visit most of them quite a lot of times. I work seven days a week on this job. I do my homework . . . I love this job and I love the people of my district, and I think that when you have the privilege of representing 500,000 of the finest people on earth, you ought to work hard.”14

Focusing on the needs and traditions of her agricultural constituents, Smith did not embrace feminist issues during her House career. As a new Member of Congress, for instance, she had requested that she be known as “Mrs. Haven Smith.”15 In 1977, though she often encouraged women to enter politics, Smith was one of three Members who did not join the Congressional Women’s Caucus during its inaugural meetings.16

Smith did not stand for re-election in 1990 and retired the following January. In retirement, she and her husband settled in Sun City West, Arizona. Three years the community named Virginia Smith one of its favorite leaders. Haven Smith died on May 12, 1997, after the couple had reached their milestone 65th wedding anniversary. Approaching age 90, Virginia Smith was still active in Nebraska politics. In 2000 she agreed to work on the campaign for a promising Republican candidate in her old district.17 Virginia Smith died on January 23, 2006, in Sun City West, Arizona.

Stella Alexander was a woman ahead of her time. She broke into the previously exclusive boy’s club of Issaquah politics when she was elected to the town council in 1927, and in 1932 was elected to a two-year term as mayor of the town. A large woman who seemed to enjoy confrontation, Alexander soon alienated her town council and eventually, the citizens she was elected to lead. The fire department resigned en masse; the police judge resigned; part of the town counsel refused to work with her; bedlam reigned in Issaquah politics in 1933. Three recall petitions were filed against the mayor; she nimbly dodged the first two, but the third was the coup de grace, and on January 2, 1934, she was recalled. In a grand finale, she refused to turn over the keys to the town hall.

Difficult Years
Stella May McCutcheon Burkhart Alexander was born on July 2, 1881, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the youngest of six surviving children. She had a hard childhood: Her parents separated when she was young, and her father took her to live with his sister. She ran away; her father retaliated by putting her in an orphanage called the Home for Friendless Children. From there she was taken — but not formally adopted — by Josiah Summy, who history records as having “indentured” young Stella (“indentured” is not explained further in these accounts). About 1895, Summy deserted a teenaged Stella in California.
Her fortunes did not improve. In 1901 she married Fredrick Burkhart, but soon learned he was already married to someone else. They divorced, and the next 14 years of her life are a mystery. One of her business cards said she went to “business college.” Her friends said she did practical nursing. Her enemies hinted that she worked as a madam, and supported their assertion by pointing to her dancing ability and the titillating fact that she wore ostrich-plumed hats, notwithstanding that many respectable women wore ostrich-plumed hats in the 1910s. In 1919 she married John (“Jack”) Alexander, described as a “British subject” with family in Vancouver, B.C. Historical accounts describe him as a “docile” man; “meek” might also be an apt description. When they moved to Issaquah, Jack opened a blacksmith business and Stella collected his business accounts.

A Tough Woman
Stella Alexander developed a reputation for frugality and toughness in her early years in Issaquah during the 1920s. A physically large woman with an equally large amount of inner strength, she was not afraid of confronting Jack’s clients when they fell behind on their bills and following up to make sure the bills got paid. This reputation served her well, for when she ran for Issaquah Town Council in March 1927, she won — “the first lady member of the council,” noted The Issaquah Press on March 11, 1927. She served on the council until the spring of 1930, resigning in May, one month before her term expired. Evidently the citizens of Issaquah initially appreciated her strength and independent spirit, because her name was bandied about as a candidate for Issaquah mayor in 1930 and in fact, she ran. She lost to L. R. Hepler by a vote of 152 to 111.

Madame Mayor
In 1932 Alexander again ran for mayor. Campaigning on the Taxpayers’ Ticket, she ran on a platform of fiscal economy, and reminded Issaquah voters of her effectiveness in collecting business debts due her husband, which even her enemies conceded was impressive. On March 8, 1932, she was elected to a two-year term, defeating the Progressive Ticket Candidate M. H. Clark (or Clarke) by a comfortable margin; the vote was 195 to 136, with 93 percent of Issaquah’s registered voters voting. After the results were announced, Alexander said that she hoped to tend to the town’s affairs “in complete harmony with members of the council” (The Issaquah Press, March 10, 1932, p. 1). The word “harmony” would later boomerang back to haunt her.
She was the first female elected mayor of Issaquah, and it seems to have attracted more attention in the larger cities than it did in the small town of Issaquah itself. Articles about her appeared in papers in Seattle, New York, and Boston, referring to her as “Madame Mayor,” the “fighting woman mayor,” and the “petticoat mayor.” This went unappreciated in Issaquah. Keep in mind that in 1932 Issaquah was not the sophisticated Seattle suburb it is today (2008). It was a country town with a population of 763 in 1930, and even the Seattle papers routinely had to explain to their readers where Issaquah was: “the little King County town south of Lake Sammamish” (The Seattle Daily Times, January 2, 1934, p. 4).
Alexander was sworn in at the regular monthly town council meeting on Monday, June 6, 1932. Described the Press in its following issue: “The inaugural session of the town council, Monday evening of this week was quite a colorful affair … several large bouquets adorned the mayor’s desk, complimentary to the incoming mayor and board.” But alas, even at the inauguration, clouds appeared on the horizon. Added the Press: “On behalf of the [town] councilors, Mr. Harris informed the mayor that her appointments [of town officials] were not all satisfactory to the council; that while they would endorse them, the responsibility for their appointment must rest with the mayor.” Things went downhill from there.

“No One Woman Is Going To Run This City”
In September 1932 the Issaquah Volunteer Fire Department resigned en masse at the monthly town council meeting over a dispute as to whether the fire department would fight fires outside the Issaquah city limits. (They soon returned.) The battle of the month at the November town council meeting was over whether the Town or property owners should pay for the repair of the town’s sidewalks. This was only a taste of things to come.
In March 1933 Issaquah held its annual election of town council members, but when it came time to swear them in three months later, three newly elected councilmembers refused to take their seats, objecting to working with a woman mayor. At the next town council meeting on July 3, the mayor appointed two new councilmen in order to establish a quorum. One seat remained vacant. Alexander asked the remaining councilmen to ratify her decision appointing the two new councilmen. They refused. One of the elected councilmen, Charles McQuade, piped up and demanded the floor. Alexander ordered Marshal Paul Henry to eject McQuade from the meeting. He refused, saying McQuade had done nothing to justify it. She told him he had a choice: Remove McQuade or remove his badge. Henry promptly turned in his badge. Fire Chief Remo Castagno then secured the floor and famously told the gathering that “no one woman is going to run this city” (The Issaquah Press, July 6, 1933, p.1). Alexander proceeded to appoint Jack Legg as town marshal. (But even that did not work out. Later in her term she was forced to resort to having three alternate marshals, each serving two weeks at a time.) The new reorganized council was then sworn in, and both the police judge and fire chief resigned on the spot.

The Battle Is Joined
Alexander called the town council in a special session on July 13, and two sets of councilmembers showed up — the council that had been originally elected, and the mayor’s reorganized council. The reorganized council tried to ignore the elected council during the meeting, but the elected council refused to back down, participating in discussions and voting on all questions brought to the floor. Eventually, “the breach became so pronounced it was finally climaxed when the mayor seized a chair and attempted to render McQuade hors de combat” (The Issaquah Press, July 20, 1933, p. 1). Explained Alexander brightly, “he left when I picked up a chair” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer Northwest, July 10, 1977, p.10). It was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Issaquah citizens filed a petition for the mayor’s recall on July 21.
By this time the Seattle papers were eagerly reporting the fray, much to the irritation of the folks in Issaquah. The uneasy relationship that had existed between the mayor and Issaquah’s fire department since its mass resignation and return the previous September soured further in the summer of 1933. After Chief Castagno resigned at the July 3 town council meeting, the rest of the fire department basically mutinied at the helm. “We won’t bring the truck. The mayor herself has got to do that as long as she is running this town,” Castagno told a Seattle Daily Times reporter. The issue was the same problem that had come up the previous September. The fire department wanted authority to fight fires wherever they were needed, even if the fires were far outside the Issaquah town limits. Alexander objected, arguing that it would leave the town without protection should a fire break out there; worse, the town’s insurer threatened not to cover fire losses arising in the town limit if a fire occurred while the fire department was out of town fighting a fire.
On July 23 the Sunday Times featured an article about the brouhaha, complete with a collage of pictures of the principal players in the recall, under the banner “On The Skirmish Line At Issaquah.” Pictured were former police judge George Baker, also the town restaurateur, grinning slyly in his chef’s hat at his stove; explained Baker, “the trouble is that she [Alexander] wants to run this town her way.” To Baker’s right was Jack Alexander, in his blacksmith cap at his blacksmith hearth and looking nervously over his shoulder at the photographer (“I don’t take any part in my wife’s politics,” he told the newspapermen). A picture of the mayor was inset between the two men. Below, a photo of former fire chief Castagno, grinning broadly and sporting a porkpie hat, holding a portable chemical tank, foot on the running board of the fire department’s Model T chemical cart and ready for action, completed the tableau.
And action came. Fisticuffs erupted in the streets of Issaquah between the mayor’s supporters and opponents. The sheriff was injured in the fracas; another person was clubbed and led off in handcuffs to jail. Alexander — who by this time was known to her detractors by a new nickname, “Madame Mussolini” — threatened to call in the troops. The Press, almost visibly rolling its eyes, published a front-page editorial in its July 27 issue assuring its readers all was well. Explained the Press: “Notwithstanding this calumnious notoriety, so apparently, gladly featured by the newspapers of the big city … there never has been a time in the history of the town where there has been less need for the calling out of the state militia, or even deputies from the sheriff’s office.”

Jousting In Court
The battle moved from the streets to the courts. Issaquah’s city attorney, George Cole, resigned so he could represent the mayor in her efforts to combat the recall. Cole obtained an injunction to stop the recall from going forward, arguing that the charges were false and, even if true, were not sufficient to warrant a recall election. Both this case and the related case of which town council was legitimate were heard by Judge J. T. Ronald on August 7. The judge voided Alexander’s council appointments and ruled the council that had been elected to be the legal town council for Issaquah. But the judge granted the injunction against the recall, finding the whole proceeding contrary to state statute, particularly since Alexander had not been notified when the petition was filed, and thus had not had a representative present when the names on the recall petition were verified. The judge added that for the sake of harmony, he hoped the people of Issaquah would drop the idea of a recall.
The people of Issaquah disagreed. They threatened another recall action, which, they said, would “thereby promote harmony for Issaquah” (The Issaquah Press, August 17, 1933, p. 1). Alexander briefly (perhaps half-heartedly) offered to resign, with certain conditions (including council approval of bills contracted by the mayor without a vote of the council). The council refused to accept her conditions, and she withdrew her offer. The townspeople filed another recall petition and Alexander quickly challenged it; it was soon dismissed on another technicality. A third recall petition was filed, and on September 29, Alexander’s lawyers obtained yet another injunction which delayed — but did not stop — the proceeding. Another hearing on the recall’s legality was scheduled for November 2.
In mid-October Alexander and her husband filed a libel suit against five of the sponsors (and their wives) of the third recall petition, and requested $30,000 in damages. History simply records that she lost, but few details of the case are known at this writing — for example, we don’t know whether or not the case even went to trial or was dismissed by a judge before trial. But on November 2, the recall case was back in Judge Ronald’s court. Alexander’s attorneys again argued that the charges were groundless — but this time, the judge ruled differently, holding that even if the charges were false, the recall proceeding itself was legal and thus outside the jurisdiction of the court.
The recall election was set for January 2, 1934. Meanwhile, chaos continued in the monthly town council meetings. In the meeting of November 6, Councilman L. J. Harris advised the mayor that she was “a cheerful liar,” and, added the Press, “the affair was enjoyed by the usual crowd of spectators” (The Issaquah Press, November 9, 1933, p. 4).

Recalled
“Issaquah’s Recall Election Tuesday” read 1933’s final issue of the Press on December 28; the article was symbolically placed next to a picture of a baby captioned “A Fresh Start: 1934” and was complimented with a mini-editorial on the next page wishing for “harmony, harmony, and more HARMONY!” in the new year. For by this time, the outcome of the recall was a foregone conclusion. While Alexander had considerable support from outside of Issaquah, particularly from women and particularly from Seattle, they weren’t voting for her. In Issaquah, Stella was a goner. “Of course, they’ll beat me,” she told a Seattle Times reporter on the morning of the election. “Next time, I’ll go out for a big job. One that pays some money — sheriff or something.”
And lose she did, by a vote of 206 to 85. “Her principal support was believed to have come from the town’s feminine voters,” sniffed The Seattle Times the next day, although the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, in a separate article, noted that some of Issaquah’s women had been active in the recall effort. Added the Times sarcastically, “Mrs. Stella Alexander’s judgment today stood vindicated. She expected to be recalled as mayor of the little town of Issaquah — and she was.” To add insult to injury, when it was announced on the night of January 2 that she had lost and that she had cast the 13th vote in the election, “some sly wag decorated the doorknob of the City Hall with a bow of black crepe and a large figure ‘13’” (The Issaquah Press, January 4, 1934, p. 1). Finally, just to top it all off, the next day another joker hung a placard on the town hall doors reading “Stella doesn’t live here anymore.”
Stella may not have lived there anymore, but she still had the keys. And she refused to hand them over, claiming she had not been officially notified that she was no longer mayor. As the next, now all-male town council meeting approached on the following Monday, January 8, the councilmen had a problem: The town hall was locked up tighter than Dick’s hatband, and they needed the keys to get in and elect a new mayor. “Oh, we will get in all right,” huffed Councilman Harris to a Times reporter, “but right now I don’t know just how” (The Seattle Daily Times, January 8, 1934, p. 1). No one knew what to do or what to expect. The suspense continued to build. The men grew more and more agitated — Madame Mussolini had aced ‘em again. Finally at the last critical instant the deposed mayor sent the keys by messenger and liberated the hall. Sighed The Seattle Times in relief: “Man ruled again in Issaquah today, the town hall keys were in masculine pockets, and peace prevailed in the little town south of Lake Sammamish.”

Later Years
Thus ended the saga of Issaquah’s fighting woman mayor. Although she had said her political career was over, in 1940 she filed to run for Secretary of State as a Republican (a curiosity, in that her obituary reported that she had been active in the Democratic party for many years). She did not prevail.
In 1936, Stella and Jack Alexander moved to Renton and purchased the Renton Tourist Hotel, which they managed for a number of years. Jack died in 1950, and shortly after that Stella was forced to sell her house in order to make room for a new road. Just as the early years of her life had been particularly difficult, so were her final years: She lost part of her eyesight. She was forced to sell most of her property and lived off of its proceeds, and at the time of her death was living in a hotel in Seattle. In declining health the final five years of her life, she suffered a serious heart attack in December 1959 from which she never recovered. She died a month later, on January 8, 1960.
But her legacy lived on. In 1982, a writer interviewing some of her contemporaries on the 50th anniversary of her election found that strong emotions, both pro and con, remained among those old enough to remember her. L. R. Hepler, who Alexander succeeded as mayor in 1932, recalled her as “crazy and a woman that really wanted to mix up trouble,” whereas others recalled a woman “upright and just in all her ways” (Halstrom). Whoever was most accurate in their description — or if the truth lay somewhere in between — all agreed that Stella Alexander left a monumental impression.

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