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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

A League Of Their Own For 75 Years The League Of Women Voters Has Involved Women In Make Positive Changes In Government

Julie Sullivan Staff Writer

In an age when most people want government off their backs and off their pay stubs, these people want government in their living rooms.

Sitting on their couches. Eating off their china.

“Come,” they say, “let us reason together.”

Seventy-five years after the suffragists won the vote for women, their political heirs are still trying to make it count. They believe government works.

They’re the League of Women Voters and you’ll know them by their tote bags.

“Look, this one’s big enough for everything, big enough for an overnight trip,” said “league junkie” Alice Stolz of the telltale bags needed to haul their voluminous paperwork.

Want to cut state spending? They held a class in 21 cities last month where 500 citizens learned how. They can tell you how to watch political ads and just what all those new folks have done to roads and schools in Kootenai County.

Talk radio? They’re there, too, although you can bet they don’t raise their voices. The anger and frustration of the current age are an anathema.

“Frankly, that bothers us,” said Becky Cain, president of the League of Women Voters, from her home in West Virginia. “Everybody is so cynical they think government is the enemy. Well, that can become a selffulfilling prophecy.”

`Our focus is good politics,” says Spokane president Pamela Behring, 45. “Informing citizens is as important as getting people to vote.”

A training ground for women leaders from Eleanor Roosevelt to Janet Reno, leaguers turn up on the Spokane school, library and boundary review boards. From the first woman Spokane County commissioner to the last mayor, from the Idaho Statehouse to Congress.

They believe in representative government - enough to challenge the term limits initiative in federal court. They believe there are ways to change the system. They just didn’t count on the changing world.

The bright energetic women once drawn into the league are now in the work force. Membership, estimated at 90,000 nationally, is down 20,000 from just a decade ago.

Linda Hallock, a biologist with U.S. Fish and Wildlife, is a true believer. But she hasn’t made a Kootenai County League meeting since she went back to work five months ago.

Spokane school board member Terrie Beaudreau and Sally Reynolds, chairwoman of the Boundary Review Board, learned their political skills in the league but are no longer active. Neither has time.

Says the Rev. Canon Charles Wood: “I’m 75, my wife is 76, and we’re not the oldest ones in our unit by any means. Without the younger women to draw on … I have some real concerns about the league being able to continue in Spokane.”

Nationally, the league is targeting 18- to 24-year-olds (and even worked with MTV on Rock the Vote two years ago) to attract new members. Men, admitted since 1974, are being recruited in record numbers. Meetings are being scheduled at more convenient times and at job sites, or canceled in favor of teleconferencing and e-mail.

“We’re having to do things differently,” said Cain.

In Spokane, the 100-member league is launching its first direct fund-raiser so it can afford to advertise the educational events that too few people attend.

“We’re restructuring, trying to figure out how to get everything done,” said Joyce Jones.

To imagine politics without the league is to imagine elections without voter guides, schools without kindergartens, City Council meetings without minutes. Each is a legacy of league work.

A grass-roots organization that takes stands on issues, but not parties or candidates, the league works with an education arm (such as producing candidate debates) and with a lobbying arm (such as challenging term limits as unconstitutional or wanting kindergarten mandated in public schools).

At the local, state and national levels, volunteers follow a strict process of studying, deliberating and taking positions.

“The way they make decisions is different from any other group. It’s not: I win, you lose. It’s what can we all live with,” said Lunell Haught, a training manager for Spokane County who ran unsuccessfully for county commissioner last fall.

The league’s roots reach back to the 1848 New York convention when 300 women rallied for parental rights, education beyond the sixth grade and a recognizable role in the clergy. It was there that anti-slavery activist Elizabeth Cady Stanton proposed the vote for women. Her motion hung in the shocked air until it was finally seconded by black abolitionist Frederick Douglass.

For the next 70 years, suffragists (the term suffragette is considered a pejorative - like kitchenette) endured apathy, imprisonment and ridicule before Congress acted.

Women in Western states such as Wyoming had the vote as early as 1869 (Idaho officially adopted suffrage in 1896 and Washington in 1910). But Congress did not pass the 19th Amendment until 1919 and then sent it to the states for ratification.

Activist Carrie Chapman Catt, seeing the vote was coming, founded the League of Women Voters on Feb. 14, 1920.

Six months later, a young Tennessee legislator cast the deciding aye after being admonished by his mother to do so, according to the National Women’s History Project.

Women won the vote. But they didn’t use it, at least not immediately, said Libby Walker, an assistant professor of political science at Washington State University.

“That’s why the league’s role is so important. They went out and convinced women this is something we can do, get out and vote, become educated,” said Walker, who lectures on gender and politics.

By 1980, women were outvoting men in presidential elections and continue to be more likely to vote and more likely to register, Walker said.

The league, meanwhile, plunged into a parade of hot issues, including gun control and abortion rights, which it supports, and term limits, which it opposes. Its legal challenge of term limits has drawn the league into its bloodiest fight in memory. In Spokane, the group has studied aquifer protection, transportation of nuclear waste, garbage and use of park space. A 1985 guide to county government became a primer for journalists. A guide on state government is in every high school.

“We care about family and the kind of community and world we’re leaving for our children. That’s the basis of everything we do,” said Stolz, who also sits on the state board.

In many families, the league is a tradition handed from mother to daughter. Haught remembers bringing her infant daughter as she completed a study on Spokane County in the 1980s.

“I just loved having my daughter with all those bright, caring, thoughtful women,” said Haught.

At a discussion earlier this month, attorney Steve Eugster and City Manager Roger Crum were asked to speak.

“What was impressive was they were educated about the political problems of the community. The questions they asked were serious and important,” Eugster said. “They’re well beyond the mission statement.”

In fact, the original mission of registering voters is passe since the motor-voter registration act made registering so easy. Now the league’s emphasis is getting people to vote smarter. But in a nation disillusioned with government, that may not be a simple task.

Stolz is optimistic. Like other leaguers who have formed lasting friendships and deep convictions through the group, she is sure of its future.

Hallock believes that involvement in the league waxes and wanes as members have children, work and retire and as their communities change.

“We’re in it for the long haul,’ Hallock said.

After all, it took 150 years to win the vote. The suffragists continue to be a model of how ordinary people - with no special rights or money - can make government work.

“When we think about the women who started this, who didn’t have any of the advantages we have - if they can do what they did, there’s no reason why the rest of us can’t make things better,” said Cain.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with story: A brief history 1848 - The first formal campaign for women’s rights begins in Seneca Falls, N.Y., when two anti-slavery activists, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, call for equality under the law, opportunity for education, and most radical of all, the right of women to vote. May 21, 1919 - The House of Representatives passes the federal woman suffrage admendment. Opponents block action in the Senate until most of the lawmakers have left for the year. June 4, 1919 The Senate passes the 19th Amendment by two votes - 41 years after it was first drafted by Susan B. Anthony. It is sent to the states for ratification. Feb. 14, 1920 the League of Women Voters “founded as a mighty experiment” by Carrie Chapman Catt at the Chicago convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Aug. 18, 1920 Tennessee becomes the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment. It does so by a single vote, at the last minute, during a recount. Aug. 26, 1920 - The 19th Amendment is quietly signed into law. 1921—League of Women Voters supports Sheppard-Towner Act providing federal programs for mothers and children. 1923- League holds first “get out the vote” campaign. 1935 -Social Security Act passes with league’s support. 1938 -League supports regulation of food, drug and cosmetics and child labor standards. 1945-49 supports United Nations Charter, World Bank, NATO and Marshall Plan. 1955- League president Percy Maxim Lee testifies against Sen. Joe McCarthy’s abuse of congressional investigative powers. 1964—Spokane’s Julia Stuart is elected national president, League helps pass several civil rights and anti-poverty laws. 1976 -League wins an Emmy award for sponsoring the presidential debates between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. Wins stands on nuclear arms control, environmental regulation and abortion rights. 1982- Equal Rights Amendment outlawing discrimination on the basis of sex, fails just three states short of ratification. 1988-League withdraws as sponsor of presidential debate after campaigns and media insist candidates follow scripts. 1993 League helps win passage of national “motor voter” registration Act. —sources League of Women Voters and Robert Cooney, director of the Woman Suffrage Media Project.

This sidebar appeared with story: A brief history 1848 - The first formal campaign for women’s rights begins in Seneca Falls, N.Y., when two anti-slavery activists, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott, call for equality under the law, opportunity for education, and most radical of all, the right of women to vote. May 21, 1919 - The House of Representatives passes the federal woman suffrage admendment. Opponents block action in the Senate until most of the lawmakers have left for the year. June 4, 1919 The Senate passes the 19th Amendment by two votes - 41 years after it was first drafted by Susan B. Anthony. It is sent to the states for ratification. Feb. 14, 1920 the League of Women Voters “founded as a mighty experiment” by Carrie Chapman Catt at the Chicago convention of the National American Woman Suffrage Association. Aug. 18, 1920 Tennessee becomes the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment. It does so by a single vote, at the last minute, during a recount. Aug. 26, 1920 - The 19th Amendment is quietly signed into law. 1921—League of Women Voters supports Sheppard-Towner Act providing federal programs for mothers and children. 1923- League holds first “get out the vote” campaign. 1935 -Social Security Act passes with league’s support. 1938 -League supports regulation of food, drug and cosmetics and child labor standards. 1945-49 supports United Nations Charter, World Bank, NATO and Marshall Plan. 1955- League president Percy Maxim Lee testifies against Sen. Joe McCarthy’s abuse of congressional investigative powers. 1964—Spokane’s Julia Stuart is elected national president, League helps pass several civil rights and anti-poverty laws. 1976 -League wins an Emmy award for sponsoring the presidential debates between Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford. Wins stands on nuclear arms control, environmental regulation and abortion rights. 1982- Equal Rights Amendment outlawing discrimination on the basis of sex, fails just three states short of ratification. 1988-League withdraws as sponsor of presidential debate after campaigns and media insist candidates follow scripts. 1993 League helps win passage of national “motor voter” registration Act. —sources League of Women Voters and Robert Cooney, director of the Woman Suffrage Media Project.