(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to "The Journal," I'm Steve Kendall.

The documentary "Trailblazing Women in Ohio Politics," illuminates the experiences and challenges of women who broke electoral barriers on both sides of the aisle.

We're joined by the Executive Producer and Director, Dr. Melissa K. Miller, of the Bowling Green Department of Political Science, wanna thank you for joining us on "Journal" again.

- Thanks for having me, Steve.

- Yeah, and the, you know, the title pretty much says it all, but talk about where the idea came from, why you thought this was a documentary that needed to be made about women who really were, you know, cut a new swath across Ohio politics in the fifties, sixties, seventies and to this day.

- It's a great origin story for these trailblazers.

It actually was an idea that one of our Bowling Green State University alums had.

Our former President of the university, Mary Ellen Mazey was at an event and an alumni, an alumnus approached her and said, you know, "There are these women who have broken electoral barriers.

The first woman Speaker of the House, the only woman to ever take the oath of office of Governor, wouldn't it be great if there was a project to honor them?"

So the President of the university contacted the provost who sent me an email, which caused a slight panic when you get an email from the Provost, "Please call me right away."

And said, "Do some brainstorming.

If you'd be interested in doing a project on women like this, let us know.

We'll talk to this, there may be a donor here."

And long story short, I got to thinking, I really love the mission of Bowling Green State University, a public university for the public good.

I really love to break down politics.

I do it in the media; I've done it here on "The Journal" many times.

And I thought these stories, I knew not yet having talked to the women that the stories would be compelling and inspirational.

So I approached WBGU, I was thrilled when Tina Simon said, "Yeah, let's do this."

And then we started fundraising.

Dr. Maribeth S. and Martin E. Rahe, that's the alumnus.

She gave the seed money, and then we applied for grants and won grants from the Ohio History Fund and Ohio Humanities.

So that's the origin story.

And it just gets better because the stories were indeed fascinating that we caught on camera.

- Yeah, now, once you were at that part, how did you decide who to try to find and talk to?

Because obviously, you know, some of these women are, you know, a little bit older now than they were when they were in office, that kind of thing.

Was it difficult finding them to begin with?

How did you go about doing that?

- Yes, I hadn't really thought this through, which is kind of funny in retrospect, but in some cases it took weeks to get through.

I mean, one of the trailblazer's, former US Treasurer, Mary Ellen Withrow, who lives in Marion, and I couldn't figure out how to reach her.

And so I reached out to her daughter on Facebook.

So I felt a little bit like I did a lot of sleuthing, right.

And so often then I called a local history museum down in Athens County to find out and get contact information for first woman Lieutenant Governor Nancy Hollister.

And so it was like, I just, in some cases I called the League of Women Voters.

Does anyone?

[Steve] Know or someone who knows someone.

[Melissa] Exactly.

And so that's, it took a lot longer to recruit and just find each of these trailblazers.

And then I, with help from and amazing support from the Center for Undergraduate Research and Scholarship, I was able to have students working over the summer, two summers in a row with funding from that center.

These undergraduates did research on all these trailblazers, and it wasn't easy, Steve.

If we had been researching Nancy Pelosi or Hillary Clinton, - [Steve] Oh, yeah, there'd be tons of yeah.

- Correct.

These women and we were especially interested in how their career started.

Sometimes they started, Mary Ellen Withrow, who became US Treasurer, her breakthrough was she was the first woman elected to the Elgin Local School Board of Education.

And we found, my students, I should say, were able to find that coverage.

We had amazing support also from Vera Lux at the BGSU Library.

She was our Research Librarian, and really helped us figure out how to get into all these small town newspapers.

And what viewers will see is that the film and Meghan Murray, Kaitlyn Kuch Finkler, our Editor and Producer, did just a beautiful job adding visual imagery.

A lot of it is these original newspaper coverage.

You see these women in beehive hairdos in the late 1960s.

It's just amazing.

- Yeah, and one of the things, if when you see this and it's, you've been premiering it around the area, as you said, and we'll have it on our air on March 23rd, you've, it's interesting to see the settings and the backgrounds as women are, you're talking with these women and the period pieces.

You're talking about newspaper articles, photos, things like that, that give you a view of that time, which now is history.

But they faced a lot of interesting challenges because while there had been women in office before, to some degree, it was pretty limited.

And a lot of these women had families and things like that.

And there was a question that would come up as like, well, while you're doing this, who's gonna take care of the family?

Which they wouldn't ask a man that necessarily.

But in that era, they were asking women that when they said, "Well, I'd like to be on the school board, I'd like to do this.

I'd like to do whatever."

So when talking with them, how did they describe those kind of challenges where people ask them, "Well, what do you mean you wanna run for office?

What's that about?"

- So the women employed different strategies.

And so it was unique to each individual candidate.

Some of them didn't have children, but those who did almost to the letter said that they got that kind of question.

Nancy Hollister, who I mentioned, she was the first woman lieutenant governor.

And she said, she seemed to, whenever there was a criticism or a thinly veiled criticism or pushback, she used humor.

[Steve] Ah, okay.

She used humor and that worked really effectively for her.

We have another trailblazer, the first African American woman in the Ohio legislature.

She was initially appointed to the Ohio House of Representatives because her husband had served for seven years.

He died in office.

[Steve] Okay.

And she told us, and viewers will hear her story in the film, that she needed to take the job to support her three children.

[Steve] Ah.

Okay.

She had a job at the library, and she said that wasn't going to help me raise the three children.

So she was elected.

There was pushback and controversy.

[Steve] Sure.

In her own words, she explains, there was pushback, there was controversy, there were others.

This is in the Cincinnati area that felt that they would've been better qualified.

And yet she was elected and then reelected and won a total of eight elections until she retired.

Never lost an election.

- Yeah, well, we come back, I know there's maybe we're talking about the same person.

I remember the one that one of the women said, and I'm not sure if she was replacing her father, maybe in that kind of a situation.

She said, at first, she's like, "I don't know if I mean, you're asking me to replace him."

They came to her and said, would you like to, you know, be appointed?

And she's like, I'm not sure.

I mean, her first thing was, I'm not sure I'm up to this.

But then turns out she was, we'll talk about her a little bit too.

Back in just a moment.

It's "Trailblazing Women in Ohio Politics," with the Executive Producer and Director, Dr. Melissa K. Miller, back in just a moment.

Thank you for staying with us here on "The Journal."

We're talking with Dr. Melissa K. Miller, who is the Executive Direct, excuse me, Executive Producer and Director of "Trailblazing Women in Ohio Politics," a documentary which you'll be able to watch on WBGU-PBS on March 23rd.

And it, we were talking about some of the stories in general, but one of the things when we watched the preview of this, and we watched it a week or so ago, was just how much we didn't know about the stories these women had to tell, because you're looking, as you said, people that, one of them served as Governor for a short time.

And another, there's elect, Lieutenant Governor, Secretary of the Treasury for the United States of America, that kind of thing.

But their stories besides what they did in office, and they were all very successful at what they did.

There was a lot of stories of how they got into this.

And you were talking about one before, but then there was the woman who had to replace her father, and he was an iconic giant of in the legislature.

And that had to be, that'd be intimidating for anybody to do, but especially a woman in that situation, because it just wasn't that usual to see women in the Ohio legislature or any area of politics at that point.

- Not only that, she was African American.

And she was only the third African American in the Ohio legislature.

Her father, C.J.

McLin Jr. had served in the Ohio House for 22 years and was considered a real force in the Ohio House.

And he had been one of the founders of the equivalent of the Congressional Black Caucus, but at the Ohio State Legislature.

And she had been running the family business, which was a funeral home business.

And what happened was he had been diagnosed with cancer.

And so he had time to talk to the speaker about who ought to, you know, who should be the one to replace him.

And he chose Rhine McLin, his daughter.

And she was, I think a little bit of intimidation comes across, at the same time, she said, "I was a people person."

- I was just gonna say that.

And she mentions that was one of her roles at the running the funeral home business was she met everybody.

She knew how to talk with people.

She knew how to read people, yeah.

- And that's right.

And also, she'd been very active in high school.

She'd always been a people person, loads of energy, went to college on a full scholarship for cheerleading, which is just one of those wonderful details.

If viewers think that to get into politics, boy, you've gotta be, you know, from birth, you know, delivering speeches and being on your debate team in your high school and stuff like that, not necessarily.

Each of these women came from different paths and different backgrounds.

Betty Montgomery here from Northwest Ohio, she was an English major at Bowling Green State University.

She went on to get her law degree and really wanted to be a prosecutor, but she couldn't get hired.

- I remember, yeah, the story's interesting there because they were talking about she wanted to be a clerk to an existing prosecutor, and there were no women county prosecutors in the state.

- None.

- Period and it wasn't even thought to be almost like allowed sort of.

- That's correct.

- In that era.

- And so in that era, which was the early 1970s, you could only be hired as a clerk for a judge if the judge was a woman.

And there was only one woman judge in Lucas County who didn't have any openings.

So she originally, her, she did end up getting hired to be a secretary for a sitting male judge.

And within two weeks she was promoted to criminal clerk.

- And I remember she made a comment and she said something like that her family, her father had said to her, you know, something in effect of the side door is still a door in.

And that's how she looked at that secretary job, I'll get in and then I'll show them and obviously she did.

- Yes, and that's advice that she and other women in the project give to women today.

Which is look for those opportunities and take risks.

I think that's one of the most impressive things.

And the reason this period that we're looking at in the film is so interesting isn't because they were the very first woman ever to be elected to anything in Ohio.

No, that was many years prior.

But during the late 1960s, 1970s and 1980s, women actually began to run for office in greater number.

And so that's when you start to see this uptick that is historically significant, and they're all part of it, and they're all, they really do tell inspirational stories of overcoming obstacles and barriers and pushback and naysayers.

- Yeah, and one of them was, when you were talking about Betty Montgomery, was the fact that yeah, you had to, if you were gonna be a clerk, you had to be of the same gender as a judge.

Well, the fact remained, there weren't a lot of women judges, which made it difficult to become a clerk because there just weren't women waiting to appoint you to be their clerk.

So it speaks to the fact that yeah, that expanded.

Then you said in the seventies, eighties, opportunities became a little more prevalent because women like Betty Montgomery and all the people we're talking about, opened those doors and made it the norm to be whatever they, whatever office they were holding or whatever thing they'd been appointed to.

- And the kinds of pushback they got so interesting.

So Joanne Davidson became the first woman Speaker of the Ohio House.

And when somebody, and how did that come about?

Well, she'd worked in the party, she'd been on the Reynoldsburg City council outside of Columbus and somebody dropped off the ballot.

And she'd been so active in the party and she couldn't get the party to endorse her.

- To even take her seriously for it.

- Right, and so she looked into all the party rules and did a little homework as she says, and figured out that the rules were such that this smaller group got to decide who would be put on the ballot and it was all people within her area.

And so she kind of did this, I wouldn't say an end run, it was totally legit.

But she had to figure out how to get on the ballot when her party was initially resistant.

She goes on to become the first woman Speaker of the Ohio House.

- Yeah, it speaks to the fact that yes, you said they, you know, you have to sort of challenge and find and look for those opportunities and when you find them, run with them and that's exactly what she did.

But yeah, it was interesting 'cause they were not taking her serious at all as a candidate and says, ah, but look what I found here.

You have to take me seriously.

And - That's right.

- The next thing you know, you said she's the Speaker of the House.

Although being Speaker of the House right now in Ohio might not be the most enjoyable experience.

- Things were different back then.

- Things were a little different back (coughs).

Excuse me.

Now, when you're talking with these people, and obviously you couldn't get to everybody, probably you wanted to have in the program, it's obviously a documentary is, the length that it is.

And was there anything when you were talking with women, with these women that surprised you about what they said about their experience and anything that was like, oh, I didn't ever think they would have this story to tell me.

- So truth be told.

(laughs) I think it's good to be honest with viewers.

- [Steve] Let's try that, yeah, okay.

- So I have been a scholar of gender and politics for a number of years.

I came to BGSU in 2005.

I teach Women in American politics.

And this whole area of research is what I study and just love.

And what I knew going into it was that there was a whole body of research that scholars have done, but it's typically been these like large surveys of men and women candidates, large surveys of women and men who've held public office.

And what that research showed were really kind of consistent findings over those years that were parties don't tend to recruit women, men tend to get recruited to run far more often than women.

Women tend to be ignored in the press, particularly in the, you know, sixties, seventies, eighties.

If they got mentioned at all, it would be about their clothing, right.

So what I knew was this academic body of research with these really fascinating findings that only other academics would read.

And that's why with this opportunity to partner with WBGU, to work with Kaitlyn Kuch Finkler, the Producer, Meghan Murray, the Editor, and really actually talk to these women, not do a survey, but let them tell their stories, it was just such an amazing opportunity and we're really bringing their stories to life for viewers.

- Yeah, when we come back let's talk a little bit more what they experienced and what they accomplished.

So back in just a moment, we're talking about "Trailblazing Women in Ohio Politics," here on "The Journal," back in a moment.

Thank you for staying with us here on "The Journal."

and we're talking about "Trailblazing Women in Ohio Politics."

And one of the things in that last segment we talked about was there's lots of statistics, there's lots of grandiose research projects to talk about gender and politics, but what you were able to do was kind of drill down to the actual stories, the actual, in their own words what it was like, not just numbers or I was elected for this many years, and that was above the average for a woman in the Ohio legislature, that thing, these are their actual narratives of what it was like from the day they decided to either run for elected office or got appointed to one.

And what it was like to have to deal with that and be sort of always the sort of odd person out, no matter where you were in the legislature or in the administrative offices of Ohio government.

- That's right.

A number of our trailblazers were the only woman.

And so Helen Rankin was the first African American woman in the Ohio House and Senate combined.

She was the first.

Mary Ellen Withrow, when she ran for State Treasurer, was the only woman on the ballot.

She was also the only woman on the ballot about 10, 12 years prior when she ran for her local board of education.

And she used an interesting strategy.

She went from the local board of education to Marion County Treasurer to State Treasurer to US Treasurer.

The only person in the history of the United States who served as treasurer at all three levels of government.

But she tells a great story in the film where she went to a union asking for the union's support and they weren't going to support her.

And she said, "How many of your union are women?"

And the gentleman who led the union said, "54%."

And she said, "Well, how are they gonna feel if you don't support the only woman on the ticket?"

So she used a strategy of really embracing and emphasizing that she was the only woman and it worked for her.

It doesn't mean that all of the trailblazers used that strategy.

As I said, Nancy Hollister on the other side of the aisle.

So we have a, you know, Democrats and Republicans here, Nancy Hollister used humor.

There's such a variety of experience, and one thing that I'll add is that important aspect of this film is that it's women from both sides of the aisle.

And one of the things that surprised us as we were doing the WBGU, our Producer Kaitlyn, as we were going and interviewing the women, these threads that kept coming up, it didn't matter whether we were talking to a Republican or a Democrat, but there'd be these threads of pushback, people saying, "I don't think you can win."

And just saying it openly.

[Steve] Yeah, directly without any, yeah, any concern at all about just in your face.

Like, well, I don't think you can win, so why are you even trying?

- Yeah, that's right.

And another thing I'll say is that the project, one of the nice aspects of the project is that on the website for the project www.bgsu.edu/trailblazers.

There's more content there.

So you can hear more sound bites and get more insights than what we could put into the film.

And you know, the fact that we were able to do that just speaks to the very rich interviews that we had with these women, which will be housed in their entirety in BGSU Center for Archival Collections later this year.

So there's so many ways the public can interact with these fascinating women and I just wanna share one other story.

This is from our other Northwest Ohio Trailblazer.

In addition to Betty Montgomery, we have Marcy Kaptur, the longest serving woman in the US House of Representatives.

And when she first ran in 1982, she was, this is just a fun fact, a quirky fact, she was starting her Ph.D. at MIT.

And she was recruited to come back to Lucas County and run for Congress, and she had the idea that the campaign would have a bake sale.

- Yeah, well, there are inter, we won't spoil, but there are interesting comments made when she begins to bring her donations in.

And the local Democratic party is like we don't, we've never delved in this kind of, and it wasn't because it was huge amounts.

It came in in trickles and they were like, "Wow, we don't know what to do with this."

- That's right.

- It was a different kind of campaign.

- That's right, these women ran different kinds of campaigns, whether it was holding a bake sale, while this didn't quite make it into the film, it's something that you can learn on the website.

Mary Ellen Withrow, who ran for Treasurer, she passed out recipes.

And she was criticized by her male opponent said, "You shouldn't, you're running for Treasurer, you shouldn't be passing out recipes."

And she said, "People keep recipes."

And of course, she went on to win.

So, you know, in the sixties and the seventies and the eighties, women were having to be creative.

And they didn't know whether it would work and for these women it did, which is really inspirational.

- Yeah, because I remember when the question came up, when Marcy Kaptur was talking about this, and she said, "I asked them how much it would cost to run for the House of Representatives."

And they quoted her a figure and she said, "My whole family's never had that amount of money in their cumulative in their entire lives.

And you're telling me that's what it's gonna cost."

And she raised the money, but yeah, in different ways, it was just interesting to see how they were actually surprising the party structure.

- [Melissa] Absolutely.

- The party structure had a certain idea of who should run, how it should be done, all that.

And as you said, they broke these barriers, like, well, I'm gonna pass out recipes.

And they probably went, "Are you crazy?"

- That's right.

- Let alone her opponent, probably the people in her own party went, "Well, that's just not."

- "Gonna work."

- "Going to work."

And yet she had a, she was out, she was smarter than they were.

People save, they hold on to recipes.

- That's right.

- And they'll remember - That's right.

- My name.

- That's right.

The stories, the challenges, the strategies they used.

I think also the fact that these women come from all different walks of life.

Some like Marcy Kaptur from very humble backgrounds.

We have African American women.

Helen Rankin was born and raised in Alabama, but moved to Ohio because there weren't opportunities for Black women in Alabama.

We have just such a range.

Mary Ellen Withrow grew up on a farm.

Joanne Davidson actually grew up in Atlanta and was schooled in the South, where I remember asking her about that in the interview, tell me, were you interested in, you know, history or those kinds of subjects?

And she said, "In the, when I went to school in the South, they were mostly interested in teaching us good manners and etiquette," and here she became, you know, the most powerful person in the Ohio legislature as speaker.

Well, arguably there would've been a Senate president as well (laughs).

- Oh, sure, and even with Betty Montgomery, she said, you know, "The traditional, these were non-traditional roles because women were, especially in the fifties, sixties, basically pigeonholed into these are the careers that women do."

And I remember she made a comment that, well, nothing wrong with all of those.

I admire the people that do those, but that wasn't what I wanted to do.

And that's what made her, again, one of the trailblazing people.

Was there, is there, we've just got a moment here.

Is there one thing, anything else that people should look for when they watch and see what these women that's consistent through all of them?

I mean, you've talked about a number of things, but is there any one other thing that people should look for?

One of the stories that they really don't wanna miss when they're watching this?

- There is a fun fact that most people don't know about Ohio.

Well, there are two really.

And one of them we have already mentioned.

And that has to do with Ohio having already had a woman governor.

But only for 11 days, so that is something to look for.

There's another fun fact that distinguishes Ohio in the election of women of color, and it distinguishes Ohio as the first in all 50 states.

And I won't give it away.

But that is a.

- I'll have to watch to get, - That is such an interesting thing to know about the state of Ohio that we led all 50 states in this one aspect of electing women of color.

The other thing is, in the film, look for those nuggets of advice, whether you are a young girl or a man or a woman, these women really value public service and they are, they were in it to really serve their communities and serve the state.

And they give some really good advice for men and women, young and old.

- Great, well, Dr. Melissa K. Miller, thank you so much.

The documentary is "Trailblazing Women in Ohio Politics."

It will air on March 23rd, third rather, here on WBGU-PBS.

You can check us out at wbgu.org.

And of course, you can watch us every Thursday night at eight o'clock here on WBGU-PBS.

We will see you again next time.

Good night and good luck.

(upbeat music)