altogether. the first six of them lead up to the presidency, and then the plan is to have the next eight cover the presidency. jackson was president for two full terms. so there will be one volume per year. we've done the first presidential volume which covers the year 1829 and the second covers 1830. we are now on the third one which will be volume nine of the whole series covering 1831. this is the heart of jackson's historical importance so we are devoting much more space than we are to jackson's pre-presidential career or his retirement years. ..

>> good evening. my name is bill, i'm editor of a newsletter, "inside michigan politics." i'm a charter member, i believe, of the michigan political history society, this august group assembled here this evening which has been the repository for so many great speakers over the past few years. tonight we are really lucky. we have a native daughter of michigan born and brought up in my hometown, flint, michigan, home of the flintstones. [laughter] she was born in the old women's hospital like former lieutenant governor jim brickly and like

me. women's hospital doesn't exist anymore, but sara went to school part of her youth at bentley school, and then unfortunately her father who worked for gm was transferred several times and places to rochester, new york, and to the bloomfield hills area. but sara's older sister sue fitzgerald is a graduate of flint central high school. so there's a big michigan connection there. and the big thing about our speaker tonight, our author is that sara fitzgerald was the first female editor-in-chief of the michigan daily. that was really something. so she was a pioneer in journalism for women as an undergraduate in college, and it kind of fits right into what i think she sensed when she first saw elly peterson. and if i'm not mistaken, i think it was on tv in 1964 during the

republican national convention. and sara was just a 13-year-old schoolgirl, bloom field hills. and she was awed to see a prominent woman on the national political scene, a woman from michigan, a republican, elly peterson. because in those days you didn't see that very often. in fact, you never saw that. and elly peterson was first in just about everything she did. for the republican party and for women in politics in michigan. and sara fitzgerald was kind of there at the very beginning when elly peterson was just hitting her stride. and sara fitzgerald went on to a very illustrious career in journalism herself at "the washington post" and a number of other newspapers. and she took on the assignment of writing a book, i think, that is very, important.

and that is a biography of elly peterson who was somebody who came out of nowhere in the mid '50s. a secretary in an office in eaton county adjacent to lansing and became a national republican female figure. and sara fitzgerald has recreated all this in her book. she's done a great job, and we are so honored and happy to have her with us this evening to talk about it. and i know you've got a lot of questions. i'll just give one little quote of elly's that maybe will steel sara's thunder a little bit, although it's so well known, i'm not going to be giving anything away. the introduction that elly peterson always had to put up -- and i heard it with my own ears back in the '60 by governor

george romney at that time was elly peterson looks like a woman, thinks like a man and works like a dog. and elly peterson had to listen to that over and over and over again. now, can you imagine george's son mitt running for president today introducing a woman that way? i don't think so. thank you very much. sara fitzgerald. [applause] >> thank you, bill, for that nice introduction. it's a great privilege and pleasure for me to be with you tonight. first, i want to thank linda cleary her help in setting up this event, and i want to commend the michigan political history society for your commitment to preserving this part of the history of our state. in the course of writing my book, i was able to make use of several of the videotaped oral histories in your james blanchard collection including, of course, the interview that bill did wellly peterson back in 1995. these are, indeed, a gift not only to historians, but to future generationses of

begannered. it's gratifying for me to be speaking here tonight, but it's also a little kit bawnting. it's daunting because i'm talking about a woman who was, by all accounts i reviewed, a very good public speaker. joyce brickly, her close friend and political protege, described elly peterson's speeches this way: she dealt in reality, but had a way of making an audience laugh along the way. but in the end she really came back on point and slammed an audience. she wasn't the delicate type. i think this made her likeness followed by powerful instructions all the more powerful. everyone who knew peterson called her elly, that is if they didn't call her mother. the headline writers at michigan newspapers in the mid 1960s said elly did this and elly did that, and their readers knew exactly who they were talking about. while i'm sure that many of you knew her as elly -- and i don't think for a minute that she would mind if i called her

that -- i'm not going to use that diminutive, familiar form tonight because i think elly peterson deverves to be taken very seriously. now, you would never say that peterson was guilty of taking herself too seriously. she was introduced as a speaker so many times during her career that by the end of it she had developed a set speech built largely out of amusing anecdotes about the ways in which she had been introduced. at one luncheon she was asked, elly, do you want to speak now or let them enjoy their luncheon a little longer? a chairman preceded peterson's speech with a pitch that included, and if we bet more -- get more members, we can get better speakers. [laughter] a district chairman summed by saying, well, there isn't a man in this audience who suspect familiar with her -- who isn't familiar with her. in kansas, i give you the

biggest woman in the republican party, elly peterson. [laughter] in recent weeks i wonder ored whether chris christie has ever heard that one. [laughter] a favorite introduction was provided by her good friend, wendell hobbs, republican leader from an ann arbor. he said there, goes one of the finest women that ever walked the streets. [laughter] the audience laughed and hobbs apologized. but peterson was quick to reply that it's the nicest thing said about me lately. [laughter] she actually incorporated the quote into the subtitle of the memoir she later wrote and published for her family members. but there were other times when it was probably more challenging for peterson to keep smiling as she sat on the dais. she recalled one occasion when she delivered a speech at a men's club, and she and her sister were the only women present. the emcee turned to her and said: and now, mrs. peterson, we hope you will not give us your bra speech as that only covers two points, but instead launch

into your girdle speech as that covers everything. [laughter] bill described the quote that george romney used a lot to introduce elly. romney, she recalled, thought he was being kind, but for years it was like waving a red flag in my face, and i always answered as politely as i could, i think like men think they think. [laughter] if i were introducing elly peterson as a speaker tonight, i would focus on her many firsts. she was the first woman to run for the u.s. senate from michigan. that was back in 1964 when there were only two women senators, both of whom had entered congress when they were appointed to fill the seats of their late husbands. she was the first woman to chair a state republican party. in 1965 people around the country thought she was, in fact, the first woman to chair any state party. this was at a time when the chairman of the republican national committee would not

permit a female vice chair to fill in if male party chair could not attend the meetings. it was at a time when the finance committee of the michigan republican party held its meetings at male-only clubs. in 1976 peterson was recruited to be co-chair of era america, the coalition of dozens of national organizations that worked to ratify the equal rights amendment. and that same year she served as deputy chairman of the president ford committee which according to my research was at that time the highest professional job that a woman had ever held in a major presidential campaign. in recent months i've often been asked what led me to write this book. i think the answer speaks to the importance that heros and hair wins can still play in our lives. as bill mentioned, i grew up in michigan, the child of parents who considered themselves to be moderate republicans. elly peterson first came to my attention when i was watching television coverage of the 1964 republican national convention.

that year peterson was about to step down from her first stint as assistant chairman of the republican national committee. she was running for the u.s. senate, and she was about to become the first woman to address the republican national convention in prime time. on this particular afternoon, as bill described, she was being interviewed by network television correspondents, and i was struck by it and remembered it to this day because it was so unusual to see a woman on the national political stage back then, and i was very proud that she came from my home state. i continued to follow peterson's career from afar, particularly during the early 1970s when i attended the university of michigan and she began to take a leadership role in the women's movement. as fate would have it, late in her life peterson moved into the same retirement community in north carolina where my parents lived. i had the great pleasure of finally meeting her in person. a decade after that i reached a point in my life when i was looking for a new project that would be intellectually

challenging and personally satisfying. and i decided that trying to capture the life of this relatively unknown political pioneer might be the answer. and if i needed another nudge, it came from the words of david broder, the dean of washington political journalists with whom i had worked add the washington -- at "the washington post." early in my research i came across a column that david wrote in december 1970 when elly peterson stepped down as assistant chairman of the republican national committee. he said of her, it is, i think, accurate to say that her abilities would have earned her the national chairmanship were it not for the unwritten sex barrier both parties have erected around that job. certainly, her organizational talents made her views as respected and her advice as sought after among her colleagues in the party as anyone in the past decade. broder continued: the role of a woman in politics is an inherently difficult one,

especially if her forte is organization. one basic problem all talented women face is the tendency of the partys to ship them off to some preserve of tea party relevancies of women's activities. i should note that's a different political context for the term tea party than the one we have today. broder went on: mrs. meterson fiercely resisted -- peterson fiercely resisted stereotyping. her colleagues back in michigan also clearly agreed. in 2003 when members of the michigan political history society were asked to vote on the person who had been the best chair of the state political party over the past 50 years, her name came out on top. still, elly peterson was a member of the greatest generation, a generation of women who knew that the way to get ahead in a professional world that was still dominated by men was to work very, very hard, be very, very good at what

you did and to a large extent keep your mouth shut about the indignities you were forced to endure along the way. elly peterson didn't set out to build a career in politics. she said it would have made a much better story if she could have said that her family always debated politics around the dinner table. but, she said, it would also be a big, fat lie. she readily admitted that she drifted into the republican party because her friends were republicans, and they put on the best parties. she noted of those days in the 1930s, we wouldn't have known an issue if we met one face to face. she attended a secretarial school in chicago and discovered that she loved everything about being a secretary. she loved people, she loved to sell, and she loved to organize an office. she was successful, she later reflected, because she understood the organization, and that was really my basic skill. she once told a writer, a good secretary can learn the business as no other position can.

during world war ii, peterson joined the american red cross and served with an army field hospital in england, france and later germany. looking back, she felt that those experiences were the source of her strong sense of patriotism, but they had not really had much impact on her political career. but those experiences undoubtedly shaped her in more subtle ways. she was able to observe firsthand how to lead men and women into battle and keep them motivated when they were weary and discouraged. perhaps it is no surprise that she often referred to her campaign workers as the troops. and if you had slogged your way through the mud of wartime france, it was no big deal to criss-cross michigan's upper peninsula in the dead of winter as she did so many times. after her wartime service and marrying, divorcing and remarrying her husband, peterson wound up living in charlotte, michigan.

in her 30s she had given up trying to have children but kept active with little jobs ask volunteer work. in 1957 one of her best friends persuaded her to drive over to lansing and interview for a job with the michigan republican party. she was hired on the spot. peterson's recollections of the office were characteristically feminine. it was indescribably filthy. filing had accumulated for months on top of files, desks, tables, the floor, and everything was covered with dust and mixed up with old newspapers and other junk. when larry said he needed me, he wasn't kidding. he needed me and 14 other potential women to clean up the place and get it in some kind of working order. so peterson pitched in to straighten things up. overnight she became, quote, receptionist, secretary, typist, mail clerk, janitor, cook, helper to all and mimeograph operator. she cleaned up that office, and then she looked around for the

next thing that needed fixing up. it was the michigan republican party. by the end of her first year, she was on the road nearly full time. in those days, she recalled, people organized every precinct, and i found that more fascinating than anything i had ever done in my life. from those days came the subtitle of my book, "mother of the moderates." peterson was 43 when she went to work as a secretary for the michigan republican party, and lend mere was seven years younger. at the time there was a popular radio comedy show called the aldridge family which began each week with a teenager, henry, responding to his mother's nagging by saying, coming, mother." lend mere recalled how he began responding to peterson that way, and the name stuck. in the course of my research, i talked to many men and women including some in this audience who worked for peterson and described how she took a mother-like interest in their lives, gave them valuable

advice, but also set high standards for them. late in her life she said there were still 15-20 people who began their letters to her by writing, "dear mother." hermit call children in-- her political children including many. in recent weeks it has occurred to me that my book might sell a few more copies or receive more media attention if i'd used the kind of words found in the titles of some other recent political books. words like revolt and rogue and troublemaker. or even something a bit more cynical like how to talk to a moderate if you must. perhaps i should have used the provocative but tongue-in-cheek title peterson used on her memoir, "confessions of a woman who walked the streets." titles like that might sell a few more books, but i don't

believe they would have been in keeping with the spirit and philosophy of a woman like elly. that's not to say elly peterson couldn't throw a figurative bomb if she felt the cause was worthy, but i believe her political fights were conducted on a higher plane. it was clearly a different time in our political history. in the 1970s it was a time when peterson could hold a high-ranking job in gerald ford's presidential campaign and liz carpenter could work for his opponent, jimmy carter, and they could still happily share carpenter's home during the final months of the 1976 campaign. peterson ran a hard-fought campaign against democratic senator phil hart in is 1964 but still the two of them were retain -- retained great respect and affection for each other. hart attended the party that celebrated peterson's retirement from the rnc in 1970 and told a reporter that as a democrat he hoped, quote, elly's come will

continue to go unheeded. as hart was dying of cancer six years later, the two of them still exchanged affectionate notes. so, mother, the name that so many proteges and political friends used when they addressed her, seemed appropriate for the subtitle of my book. and i think the subtitle, "mother of the moderates," captures the role peterson played not only in michigan, but in the ranks of the national republican party in the 1960s and '70s. much has been written over the past few years about the particular challenges women can face when they seek high public office. research has shown that women more than their male counterparts need to be asked or encouraged to become candidates. that was certainly the case back in 1964. governor george romney and his aides were concerned that the governor would not be able to win re-election when senator barry goldwater was at the top of the republican ticket. so they recruited peterson to run against phil hart knowing

that in the process she would do what she could to keep the party unified that year. despite her defeat, peterson ran a very credible campaign. however, the press coverage of her campaign was often relegated to the women's pages and laden with images that would make us cringe today. for instance, a detroit free press editorial that was headlined "millionaire in state's ring" said peterson was, quote, a straight from the shoulder political pro who will be as hard to deal with as a wife who wants a new dress. [laughter] another reporter wrote that, quote, the rustle of political petticoats will set the scene. and another story said that peterson had an endorsement from former president eisenhower, quote, tucked firmly in her handbag. peterson recalled that at the time such comments didn't bother her much because there wasn't much she could do about them. but later in life as her

feminism matured, she recognized the kind of denigrating stereotypes on which they were based. i believe one reason why peterson is not better known particularly outside the state of michigan is that there were so few women journalists covering politics at the time. it's easy to forget that it was not until 1971, the year after peterson retired from the republican national committee, that women were first admitted into the membership of the national press club and allowed to come down from the balconies to cover newsmaker lunches. i once asked peterson if she could identify her click moment, a term coined by an article in ms. magazine in its early days to describe that episode in a woman's life when a feminist consciousness is awakened. peterson knew exactly when her moment occurred. romney managed to win in 1964, but it was not a good election for the rest of the republican ticket. at a time when no woman had ever

chaired the state republican party, prominent republicans pushed romney to recruit peterson for the job. a month later at the state party convention, she was waiting to go out on stage to accept her new position when max fisher, the industrialist who served as head of the party finance committee, pulled her aside. he congratulated her on her new job and then said, but, of course, we can't pay you what we paid art elliot, her predecessor. you are a woman. he then told her she would be paid $15,000 which was $6,000 less than elliot received. peterson's response typified the kind of person she was. she later acknowledged that she had thought about crying, but on the other side of the curtain the convention delegates were growing restless, and she knew her party needed her. so she went straight to the podium and delivered what reporters described as, quote, an emotional speech for party unity. then she announced that she was

donating $6,000 of her own salary to help retire the party's debt, and she expected all the delegates to make contributions as well. nobody realized she was not going to get the money in the first place. not the reporters covering the event, not even her male deputy. and peterson's stoicism and diplomacy were such that it was many, many years before she began to identify fisher publicly by name. still, the episode infuriated her. how dare they think i'm supposed to save the party, she told an interviewer late in her life. they lost everything in 1964. they are the ones who thought i could do it, but i'm not worth the money because i'm a woman? and i think that really was the fist time i began to observe things of that kind. it bugged me then, and it bugs me to this day when they put women down like that. i'm sure that experience helped to drive her right into the early leadership of a national women's political caucus and 11 years later into the leadership

of the fight for the equal rights amendment. peterson came to realize that she herself had experienced sex discrimination in a very profound way. early in her political career peterson observed that women were happy to perform the kind of mundane, detail-oriented political chores that she felt men were unwilling to do. but by 1972, the year after the founding of the national women's political caucus, peterson felt women's attitudes were changing. in an article she wrote for the magazine of the american association of political consultants, she said: we are through, through with stuffing envelopes, ringing doorbells, answering phones, baking cakes, licking labels, through with all the work a male will dare not touch, through with the go-er if chores in politics. this will and has come as quite a shock for many candidates and their managers. for too long women have been doing 80% of the gut work in politics and getting little in

thanks with thes a form letter, a wilted corsage and a condescending thank god for the ladies from a victorious candidate who speaks from the platform while we are in the pit. finally, women are having the courage to climb up there where they belong, demanding not only to do the seating chart, but also to be a part of it. in feminist circles there was a well known quote that goes well behaved women seldom make history. i think that for most of her life elly peterson was exceedingly well behaved, or at least in her public pronouncements. that's what was expected of women of her generation. her personal papers reflect that as the women's movement began to make headlines in the early 1960s and '70s, she was turned off by the tactics of the more militant members. but when she got to know the women on a more personal level, she developed a greater understanding of them as people and appreciated the experiences that they had shared as women. as peterson aged and was

approaching her 70s, three things happened. first, her political party turned to the right. from her days in the michigan republican party, she had argued that the only way her party could win was to seek to include as many voters as possible including blacks and women. but now she felt the party's strategy was based totally on writing off those segments of the population. similarly, she was very distressed that by 19802 republican party had abandoned its history of support for the equal rights amendment. i found that today many persons are surprised to learn throughout most of the 20th century the republican party had supported the era more strongly than the democrats had because the democrats were concerned about the amendment's potential impact on workplace protection laws. secondly, peterson's own career and her involvement with the women's movement led her to identify more strongly with women's issues than with the issues that were increasingly defining her party. finally, she was old enough that

she no longer had to worry about whether she was burning any bridges behind her. there were no political leadership jobs in her future, so she could feel free to speak her mind. all of these factors culminated in her decision in 1982 to lead a group of moderate republican women to very publicly endorse democrat james blanchard when he ran against richard headily, the conservative republican for governor of michigan. later on she described it as, quote, a protest, a statement, a scream in capital letters to be heard and to be considered. peterson's decision drew the kind of press coverage that she hoped it would and generated some angry letters from some quarters of the republican party. but she did not retreat. she told the detroit free press, i gave my 15 years of my life, 24 hours a day to build a broad-based republican party, and to find now that we're reversing all that, i guess you have to say i'm a michigander

and a woman before i'm a republican. over the time i've been working on my book, former massachusetts governor mitt romney has emerged as one of the front runners, if not the front runner, for the republican presidential nomination for 2012. much of peterson's political story, of course, is the story of george and lenore rom ony, mitt's parents. one of the things i found most poignant in her life was how she and the romneys struggled to preserve their long friendship as their political views diverged over the women's movement and the mormon church as they fought over issues such as ratification of the era. many commentators have written about george romney's own failed presidential campaign when they have explored mitt romney's background. but i've seen virtually no mention of the fact his mother also sought statewide office, running against phil hart for the u.s. senate sheet from michigan six years after elly peterson did. having had two parents who ran for statewide office is a

distinction that i believe candidate mitt romney and his brother scott may share only with the carnahans of missouri. george romney first came on the political scene after elly peterson had gone to work for the michigan republican party. she recalled that she first met him during the michigan constitutional convention that marked its 50th anniversary this year. peterson got to know lenore romney when the two of them began making appearances in small towns around the state speaking in the support of the constitutional revisions. when george romney ran for governor, peterson was assigned the job of managing lenore romney's appearances. she wrote in her memoir that she did not accept the assignment, quote, with a great deal of joy, and that she thought her own credentials, quote, rated more than another hand-holding position, shepherding the wife of a candidate. elly peterson lived by my mother's maxim of, if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything. and so by her standards those

statements were expressions of true annoyance. but she developed a great deal of respect and a close friendship with lenore particularly after mrs. romney wowed the press corps at a press conference that she pretty much forced peterson to set up for her at the start of the campaign. peterson traveled all over the state with mrs. romney in that 1962 campaign, and mitt -- then a teenager -- sometimes accompanied them. local women, peterson recalled, handled all the details of lenore romney's trips, raising money by selling everything that was salable. mitt, she recalled with a bit of foresight, i think, quote, was in seventh heaven doing the selling. in her memoir peterson described how george romney's strong religious convictions could be a source of amusement for the rest of his family. she recalled that on one trip near travers city they consulted maps that seemed to suggest there was a road that looked as if it went over water. mitt, she said, kept asserting that the road had to be there

because it was, in fact, on the map. finally, his mother said in exasperation, oh, mitt, you know good and well a road will not go over water unless there is a bridge. oh, that's right, mitt retorted. dad isn't here. george romney, of course, went on to get elected as governor, and as i noted, later recruited peterson as his ticket mate in '64 and his state party -- [inaudible] in 1965. peterson did not by her own account play a major role in romney's campaign for the 1968 republican presidential nomination. as far as i can tell, she did not complain about this and, of course, it was good to have deniability when things did not, in the end, go very well. but i think she couldn't help but be disappointed she did not play a more prominent role considering how she had been recruited to be state party chair three years before and considering the role she had play inside engineering the republican statewide victories in 1966. victories, i might add, that

demonstrated to the national pundits that george romney could, in fact, help elect other republicans. back in the day when that was still an important consideration. but elly peterson didn't believe in elbowing her way into powerful positions. she waited until she was asked. and back then presidential campaigns were still limited to guys. it would be another nine years before a woman was installed in a job as high ranking as a deputy campaign chairman of a presidential campaign, and that would turn out to be peterson herself. peterson did have a front row seat on the fallout that accompanied george romney's statement that he had been brainwashed in vietnam by the u.s. military and our diplomats there. although mitt romney was in europe for most of his father's presidential campaign, one can appreciate how his father's deflating experience probably helped shape the way he responds to questions in his presidential campaign. as a former journalist, i've found it interesting to reflect on how george romney's apparent

gaffe played out on the national stage back in the days before 24-hour cable news shows and the worldwide web and twitter. i've wondered whether the ongoing scrutiny of a single political gaffe was more intense back then compared to what seems to be our gaffe-a-day kind of culture now in which every 24-hour news cycle seems to produce a new one for a different candidate. but back in 1967 romney's gaffe cometted to resonate for months -- continued to resonate for months. i did not have room for this in my book, but i'll share it with you now. by the time the gridiron club held its fall dinner in late 1967, approximately the same place we are in the current election cycle, three of the six tunes in the club's republican skit were directed at george romney. i'll spare you my singing, but here are the words to one of them set to the 1930s tune, "did you ever see a dream walking?" did you ever see a

brainwashing? well, i did. with a plunger -- [inaudible] flashing? well, i did. did you ever get your foot caught in your mouth just like me? and gulping hard, find you've choked on your knee? the final verse went: did the white house lights stop beckoning bright, fading right out of your view? while the thoughts that have wander canned the brain that gets laundered, they can make it pretty tough on you. romney continued to read his polls and surprised his closest supporters, including peterson, by pulling out of the race just before the first primary in new hampshire. as for lenore romney's campaign, it was a very painful time for peterson. while she thought lenore romney had many gifts, she felt that mrs. romney's campaign was doomed from the start and tried to convince her not to run. she felt that mrs. romney was running only because important male politicians, including her

husband, wanted her to make the race and that that would become abun cabotly clear -- abundantly clear as the campaign went on. i think she also did not want her friend to feel as degraded as she had six years before. but once lenore romney was committed, peterson tried to be supportive, taking time off from her job in washington to campaign for her. on election night peterson phoned, she sent yellow roses, and she wrote another note later on. lenore responded with gratitude. it helps to know there are others who give their all because some things mean so terribly much. the political highs and lows that peterson had shared with the romneys made their political separation a decade later all the more painful. the romneys had become vocal opponents of the equal rights amendment and argued that ratification of the amendment would lead to homosexual marriages and the further dissolution of the american family. peterson's frustration was palpable as she conferred in

letters with michigan first lady helen milliken and other friends about how she should respond to them. finally, in early 1980 peterson's frustrations boiled over. she wrote the former governor that, quote, i am in this battle because of the many inequities i have endured in my political career. she recalled how she had been recruited to run for the senate and then had had to beg for the financial support she had been promised. she recalled how she had been told that she was the only one who could solve the michigan republican party's problems and then, quote, when i was too far down the road to back out, she was told she wasn't worth the money paid to other state chairmen because i am a woman. there are so many women every day, she wrote, in politics and business who face these same inequities. and then in typical elly peterson fashion, she wished romney and his family best wishes for the new year. romney replied that he was sorry about her experiences.

quote, if it was my fault, please, forgive. years later peterson recalled that when she returned to michigan as she grew older, she would always go have lunch with the romneys. but it was never quite the same, she recalled, because we couldn't talk about the equal rights amendment or choice. so instead, she said, they talked about the people they had known. i think their experiences, unfortunately, are familiar for many of us today. sadly, politics have become so polarized and emotional that it becomes very challenging to maintain relationships with persons with whom we disagree. how many of us have learned that we should avoid talking about politics with certain of our friends and family members? i spent three days interviewing elly peterson when she was 92, and we talked a lot about politics and watched several hours of cable news television shows together. and so when i'm asked what she would think about the state of our politics today, i feel

pretty confident when i answer. i know she was very concerned about how campaigns had come to be dominated by money and the large sums that are now required to be raised to be able to mount a campaign. she would be very concerned about the increased polarization of our politics and our inability to forge bipartisan solutions. i thought it was noteworthy that former first lady betty ford had asked cokie roberts to speak at her memorial service and wanted her to recall the days when members of congress from opposing parties could still be close friends. elly peterson was certainly part of that world as well. finally, peterson was a strong believer in increasing the participation of women in politics and government. over her lifetime she watched as the number of women serving in congress went steadily upward, but that trend line has leveled out, and at the state legislative level it's actually headed back downward. for peterson, this would have been a major disappointment.

peterson expressed her perspective well in a speech i found in her personal papers that i believe was the last formal speech that she ever made. she delivered her remarks about 20 years ago to the men's club of the retirement community where with she lived with my participants. parents. she began by saying that she considered herself to be an independent and was not there to espouse the views of any particular party or candidate. she concluded by saying: politics has changed but not all for the better. today it's too much about money, the raising of it, the spending of it. and worst of all, there prevails a tone of incivility and mean-spiritedness. i believe that the surest way to political oblivion for a party is through intolerance; intolerance of women, intolerance of minorities, intolerance of people who deviate from one narrowly-defined point of view. in diversity there is strength for us as a party. as a commitment, as a nation.

and in our tolerance and fairness to others lies the path to being the rational human beings we all aspire to be. may we all find our way gracefully and passionately down this path. thank you. [applause] i think we have time for a few questions. or -- bill. >> i have a question about the millikens because back in the '60s bill milliken was a fairly minor political figure, wasn't widely known in the state, became lieutenant governor. and she was elly peterson politically was almost a creation of george romney at a high level after she ran for the senate. he was the one who asked her to become the chairman, and she became the chairman. how did her relationship with the millikens evolve and develop? because they became quite close, as you know. and yet ironically, her

relationship with romney who was really the main republican figure atrophied and withered away with the problems you describe. >> um, bill's question was to talk a little bit about her relationship with the millikens, william milliken and helen milliken and how that evolved and contrasted with the romneys. i think one thing that impacted her political relationship with bill milliken was the fact that she actually moved to washington with romney, or she was going to move with romney in 1969, and he had talked to her about a job at the housing and urban development department, and then she ended up going back to the republican national committee. so i think for bill milliken's first year as governor, she was in washington. and then, of course, after 1970, um, retired from more formal political roles. but at the same time, helen milliken's feminism was developing, and so they became

very close and in part through the battle over the equal rights amendment. and when elly and liz carpenter decided to step down as the co-chairs of the era america, they recruited helen milliken and sharon percy rockefeller to take their places, so she continued to have a very close relationship. um, i think that she had a great deal of respect for bill milliken as a politician, and i think he was clearly out of the same moderate republican mold that she was out of. any other questions? or comments people want to share from your own experiences? go ahead again, bill. >> no, go ahead, liz. >> liz. >> i wanted to say, i gather that you're a little bit younger, so -- [inaudible] when she was breaking through all those barriers, i be i -- but i can remember her -- [inaudible] and i thought you captured so well how it felt to just see the

little article on the women's section about her and what she was doing. she really was a groundbreaker. >> i think you're right, and the comment was about that if you were a woman, shall we say in our 60s or so -- and older women as well -- that she caught your attention. and it was like i said, the headlines around here could refer to elly, and you knew who they were talking about in both terms of her first and second senate campaign which was ground breaking in michigan and nationally at the time and as well when she became the state republican chairman. one of the things that interested me when i went through her papers was how many if, for instance, the michigan ap or upi reporter would do a profile of her, it would run in papers all over the country because it was considered unusual. and it was also right around that time, well, this was more, i guess, into the early '70s

that newspapers were starting to transition their women's, traditional women's sections to a more feature section. the post, for instance, used to call their section for and about women, and it became the style section in about 1970. and so that transition was happening in journalism at the same time. um, but i think -- and one of the things that was interesting, too, to read letters from women who really got excited about her campaign and working in it. and elly would comment both, you know, to me and in her memoir that one of the things that was challenging for her, she knew she was never going to win, but she had to maintain, you know, a positive view that she could. and one reason she felt she had to was that, you know, so many people were excited about her campaign and working very hard for it. bill. >> i noticed in the one of the reviews of your book that keith --

[inaudible] who was one of her early field operators when she was republican state chairman said about her, and you have addressed this eloquently in your talk. she didn't leaf the republican party -- leave the republican party, the republican party left her. how accurate do you really think that is in a way? i know you talked about later the republican party took a turn to the right. but i remember talking to elly peterson in the late '60s, and she was already concerned that the nixon administration was too far to the right and too conservative. and today richard nixon probably isn't acceptable at all to modern republicanism. [laughter] so, i mean, how much did she actually change her views, or do you think she was absolutely pretty much rock solid, the same philosophical outlook and ideology from the time of larry -- [inaudible] in the late '50s all the way

out until the end? >> >> no, i think she evolved, and i think clearly in the 1960s she was concerned, um, about right-wing elements in the republican party both in michigan and on the national level. and one of the reasons why she was concerned about the possibility of phyllis schlafly would become president of the national confederation of republican women. i think that the men she championed were in the romney/rockefeller/bill scranton, that kind of mold. and i think that, you know, she said that when nixon ended up as candidate that, you know, she was, she was still a gung ho republican, and you got behind your guy, and she worked hard for him. but i think during the years that, the first two years of his presidency she was, i think, very frustrated because on the one hand as the assistant chairman of the rnc and trying to get women top jobs in the

administration, trying to be a liaison with the state party leaders, she found that the nixon white house was sort of running their own game. and that frustrated her because i think she felt we can all work together to build the republican party, and it wasn't working the way she envisioned it. and i think, too, it was -- she came out of michigan where she had started the detroit action center, and she had this vision of trying to take that concept nationwide and viewed it was still a point in our history where the republicans could conceivably attract a certain percentage of the african-american votes, certainly more than they do today. and, you know, she thought this would be one strategy towards making it more of a big tent party. so i think it was gradual, and i think that probably as her feminism matured that that gave her perhaps issues that she could more definitively hang her hat on. and it's possible that if that hadn't of happened, she just would have become more politically inactive as she got

older. you know, i do find as i've gone around that there are a lot of people who come up to me and say, you know, i was that kind of republican, and i miss it, and i don't feel that the party's that way, you know, these days. she, one of the things she said, too, and i think this was in about 1970, um, which was a tough election and a number of people, you know, that she liked a lot got defeated that year, um, she felt that one of the big differences between moderates and people on the right was that moderates in between elections tended to go back to their regular lives. you know, they department have the same kind -- they didn't have the same kind of passion that she thought that the right wingers did and this made a difference in how the party evolved because the moderates would move on to other things and didn't seem to have the same kind of passion. and she also felt that the moderates could get passionate about a particular candidate, be

it romney or rockefeller, but that had, um,less sort of support for an ongoing ideology compared to the right wing. uh-huh. >> sara, did she, did ms. peterson ever share with you what she thought? earlier in your conversation here you shared with us that, you know, when family and friends that we don't often, or we don't engage in conversations anymore, we kind of avoid politics, you know, like religion and those types of summits, did she share with you why she thought that had changed over time, why people and, you know, friends and family could not discuss it in a civil manner? >> well, i think, and the question was about whether elly peterson had shared with me her views about why the increase in polarization, um, had occurred. i think it's been fueled, um, by the media culture we live in

now. and also i think one of the contributing factors is, um, frankly, the last couple of rounds of redistricting in which particularly like in congress or in the state legislatures political districts are being drawn so that candidates can be assured of election, you know, the republicans will put republicans into their districts and democrats will put it in theirs, and they'll kind of say this is how we're going to divide the world. and what it means is that the politicians in the those kinds of situations because they're playing to their base, it makes them take, i think, more extreme positions than they would if, you know, they had an electorate that was, you know, better balanced or not chosen in a way. and i think that it's unfortunate that, you know, again, the way our media culture has developed in the past few years, that the good news is you have more voices. the bad news is you have more voices. and the way people, you know,

feel that they can get to be heard is sometimes, unfortunately, by being more strident. and because we have, um, more media outlets now, it also means that we can tend to follow the media outlets that we tend to agree with. we have less of a kind of -- the big media common experience that we did, i think, certainly back in the '50s or '60s or '70s, you know, when i was growing up. so i think all of these things contribute. and when elly and i talked about, i mean, i think she was concerned and, of course, we were watching cable news there, and you can see the extremes that particular medium has provoked, and that has contributed. but i think what it does is that it increases the emotionalism around politics more so than rational discussion, and that's one of the things that makes it more difficult. >> i'm curious, did elly peterson have any kind of a friendship or relationship with

martha give in their support of the equal rights amendment? did they work together? is. >> yes. the question was elly peterson's friendship with martha griffiths. of course, when she started off in politics, and she writes about this, when she went to work for the republican party, the michigan democratic party seemed to be on the ascendancy with people like phil hart and martha griffiths and her husband and neil stabler. so she viewed her, obviously, as a very talented competitor. but, um, they became close later in their lives, and griffiths succeeded in the getting the era discharged from the house judiciary committee during the time when elly peterson was assistant chairman of the republican national committee. and she, when elly was in washington at the time was the first time that women were appointed as generals by president nixon. and so she hosted a reception to

mark this occasion. and because she viewed it as a victory for women rather than a victory for republicans, she invited her counterpart from the democratic national committee over to share in this reception. and i bring this up only because the day that this event happened was the day griffiths -- i guess it was the day that it actually passed the house, and they were very surprised at how fast it passed congress which sort of caught everybody by surprise, um, you know, suddenly they had all these states passing it, falling into line, and it was just those last few states that gave them fits. and then, of course, griffiths was blanchard's running mate when she came out and endorsed blanchard, so she would have had some interaction with her at that time as well. >> sara, is this your first book? >> this is my first nonfiction book. i've written a couple of novels, and if you asked me which is harder, a novel or a nonfiction book, i'd say a nonfiction book because you can't make it up. [laughter]

but -- >> and is there another book in your -- >> well, first, i'm going to take a little break. but i will say that i like to think that my experience as a novelist helped me in writing this book because, um, you learn a lot along the way in terms of telling a story and the pacing and trying to understand a character. and i hope that served me well in doing this book as well. >> bill talked a little bit about your start at the michigan daily. would you just kind of give us a little overview of your career and what led you to "the washington post"? >> sure, briefly. the question was about how my career had evolved. i started off at michigan as a journalism major and went over, began working on the daily my second semester in college and had a bunch of different jobs there. as bill noted, ended up as editor-in-chief. i was very fortunate in that i, um, i had two summer internships during my college years.

i was lucky. one of them was a dow jones newspaper fund copy editing internship, and i spent that summer on the akron beacon-journal which was a night newspaper. and that job then led to a reporting internship the next summer on the miami herald. and it was a great summer to work on the miami herald because it was 1972 when both of the national political conventions were in miami. so it was a great front row seat on politics. but as best as i can determine, it was not a convention that elly peterson actually attended. so kind of an interesting twist. um, after college i started my career on the st. petersburg times first as an editor and then a copy editor and followed my future husband to washington and worked for four years on national journal magazine and then about 15 years at the post as an editor. and then for about five years as a new media developer there back in the very early days of online services and all. and left the post in the mid 1990s and have done a few other things in between.

but as i said to somebody, i decided to pursue this project when i -- a consulting firm that i had founded, i sold out my share to a partner, and i decided that i was too young to be retired at that age, i needed something to keep me busy, so this was a good project. >> can thank you. >> thank you. [applause] thank you very much. >> for more information visit the publisher's web site, press.umich.edu and search elly peterson. booktv toured the langston hughes library while in knoxville, tennessee. watch that footage next. [background sounds] >> i'd like to welcome you to the langston hughes library. located at the children's defense fund haley farm in clinton, tennessee. the library is a private reading

room collection of about 6,000 items. and we are a noncirculating collection which means you can come and do research and scholarship here, but the books stay on the premises. we have a premier collection here, the special focus collection. the books in this collection are written by african-american authors. children's books that are illustrated by african-american illustrators. books on black experiences. we really focus on the civil rights movement, especially the role of women in the civil rights movement. books on spirituality, african-american culture, history, legacy. books on women's issues, books on african culture, african

history. so all of the books, all of the topics that you would, um, say that relate to african-american culture and history, we have them here in the collection. the pictures that you see displayed here around the library are from the library's dedication in 1999. you see first lady hillary clinton was among the many, many renowned guests that were here for the dedication ceremony. lynn riggio. the library is designed by maya lynn who's shown in this photograph here. maya lynn who also designed the vietnam, the vietnam veterans' memorial in washington d.c. when you walk into the library, it's sort of like entering a magical place because it's so