When Hillary Clinton won the Democrat nomination for US president in 2016, many thought that she was the first woman so honored.
Not so. Several women, Victoria Woodhull and Shirley Chisholm among them, had their names placed in nomination across the years.
The name that rings in my mind is Margaret Chase Smith, Republican senator of Maine, who was nominated at the Republican Convention at San Francisco’s Cow Palace in 1964. US Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, a right wing Republican, won the nomination.
Smith is remembered for taking on Sen. Joseph McCarthy in his crusade to ferret out Communists from the US during the 1950s:
I don’t want to see the Republican Party ride to a political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny—Fear, Ignorance, Bigotry, and Smear.
