Mel and Jean Carnahan

Editor's note: This essay was written prior to the November 7 election. Mel Carnahan “won,” and his widow was named senator.

The recent tragic death of Missouri governor Mel Carnahan has moved the state's Senate race into new terrain. Carnahan's name will remain on the ballot; if he receives more votes than his Republican opponent, incumbent John Ashcroft, the current governor will name a new senator. Acting Governor Roger Wilson has stated that he would name Carnahan's widow, Jean, to fill the seat that her husband had sought. Jean Carnahan indicated October 30 that she would accept the appointment.

At a time of loss and grieving, Wilson's gesture is well intentioned. It is not, however, the right thing to do. Invoking the so-called “widow's mandate”—a wife succeeding her late husband in office either through appointment or election—is an unofficial tradition in American politics. In congressional history, seven women in the Senate and thirty-five in the House have assumed their seats through the deaths of their husbands. Most recently, Mary Bono (R-California) succeeded her late husband, Sonny Bono.

Voters overwhelmingly support the idea of a widow standing in for her husband. A recent Rutgers University study showed that through most of the last century, 84 percent of widows have won their first election. Women seeking office in their own right have won only 14 percent of their initial races.

That statistic prompts a disturbing question about gender and politics. Why are voters more likely to elect a woman who stands in, rather than a woman who stands on her own? The answer is clear. The American public still is more comfortable with the idea of a woman acting out her husband's wishes than governing according to her own principles.

Voters elect widows as substitutes for husbands and that is what makes the practice so wrong-headed and—upon deeper consideration—so objectionable. It is not that Jean Carnahan and other widows like her should not hold public office. By all accounts, Jean Carnahan is a decent and admirable human being. But to elect a woman at this precise moment only because she is a wife is reductive and demeaning.

When widows are tapped to fulfill their husband's terms, voters declare that a woman's marital status is the single most important reason for placing her in office. That attitude reduces a woman to one aspect of her identity—her role as wife—and it reinforces the stereotype that a woman is a mere shadow of her husband: a person who does not function as an autonomous human being.

No one in Missouri knows exactly where the governor's widow stands on the many issues facing the state and the country. Supporting her for the position Mel Carnahan sought assumes that she is the exact replica of her husband and someone who will think and act and vote as he did.

Before 1920, women in the United States were denied the ballot because some opponents declared that their votes were superfluous—they would always vote the way their husbands did anyway. Eighty years and many widow's mandate candidates later, we have to ask ourselves whether we are any more enlightened than those who fought to suppress women's political voices.

Because Jean Carnahan has never held or sought public office and has no legislative record, her advocates argue that the widow's character—in particular the dignity she displayed during her husband's funeral—make her the best choice for the United States Senate. While well-meaning, such a rationale holds widows to a lower political standard than any other contender running for public office. It does not require or even expect them to take specific stands on critical issues. More troubling is the myth this rationale perpetuates—that women are essentially emotional beings who have no head for the real world of politics.
Standing by a husband's side during political campaigns makes a wife a supportive spouse; it does not make her a suitable elected official. To confuse the two positions suggests that the only way women can achieve political power is by being the wife of a politician.

Some say it is wrong to question the widow's mandate at such a difficult time for the state of Missouri. Some Democratic loyalists may denounce any election process that fails to invoke the Carnahan name. Some may argue that supporting the widow's mandate actually advances the cause of women. But what is wrong and what should be denounced is a tradition that views women as surrogates, firmly welded to their husbands' beliefs and devoid of independent judgment.

Martha Ackmann

The best way to support women in politics is to encourage women candidates to run for office on their own, addressing issues, and taking their viewpoints to the people. The widow's mandate asks women to enter politics by becoming their husbands—a transformation that is not only impossible, but also contrary to the principles of American equality.

 

This essay originally appeared as commentary in the “Womannews” section of the November 1 issue of the Chicago Tribune. Martha Ackmann, MHC lecturer in women's studies and director of community-based learning, is a native of Missouri.