By Laura Tutor
Anniston Star

Her life in political accomplishment started long before she was able to vote.

Teresa Lindsay remembers her mother and daddy hitting the campaign trail together. Solid Democrats, Jimmy Carl and Jane Moore worked the neighborhoods, fire halls and clubs of Blount County to further their cause.

Their daughter watched. She learned, and made up her mind as a schoolgirl that she would not sit on the political sidelines. The legacy continues today with Lindsay being one of only six women in Alabama to head county Democratic party committees. She’s been in the job eight months, and says she’s just in time for what promises to be a banner year for women in politics.

“I’ve always been active in politics, even back when women really weren’t so much,” says Lindsay, who lists a George Wallace election as the first race she ever paid attention to. “I think everyone’s excited this year.”

Consider:

• Hillary Clinton is the first woman to win a presidential primary.

• Alabama has more women elected to state office now — six — than any other time in its history.

• In the first tiers of presidential primaries, unmarried women, who typically ignore elections, are voting in record numbers, according to Page Gardner, founder and president of Women’s Voices. Women Vote.

• Officials for Alabama’s League of Women Voters and both of its political parties say Tuesday will see women continue to drub men in participation rates at the polls.

“I think first of all the women will be out in force,” says Bobbie Lou Leigh, president of the Alabama Federation of Republican Women. “In the last presidential election, 56 percent of the women who could vote across America did. And probably there’s more interest today than there was then.”

A lot of that interest can be laid at Clinton’s feet. She’s been a lightning rod for conservative talk-show hosts. But she’s also raised the curiosity of women who, in years past, would have shown little interest in the primary season.

“That doesn’t mean they are all going out to vote for her,” Leigh adds, “but that does mean there is interest, a gender factor that’s never been there before.”

People who get paid to study such things as elections and their history say Clinton’s run is historic for more reasons than a primary win here or there. After all, Geraldine Ferraro, Shirley Chisholm, Pat Schroeder and Elizabeth Dole had tipped their hats toward the presidential or vice presidential ring long before Clinton came to Washington as first lady.

What’s been interesting about Clinton’s campaign is that she’s the first to be taken seriously, says Ruth Mandel, a founder of Center for American Women and Politics in 1971 and its director until 1995. In 1972, Chisholm went all the way to the party convention and received some delegates. However, Chisholm told Mandel that she was seen as someone who was making a statement — not as a serious candidate.

The same could be said of Carol Mosley Braun, who went through the early primary stage as one of 10 candidates and participated in some of the debates.

“The fact that she is being taken seriously is important,” Mandel says. “And that has an effect in a number of ways.”

The most obvious way is the one of which Lindsay and Leigh speak. Women notice each other. A woman making a speech in a power suit has a different effect on a woman than does a guy making the same pitch. When Hillary Clinton speaks of parenting issues and child-care concerns, she does it from the standpoint of being a mother. When she talks about family issues — and Lord knows hers have been public — she does so from the position of a wife of 32 years.

While many may not agree with the political route she has taken, none can doubt the impact she’s had.

“Here in the South, especially, we still have that old idea that woman are not quite up to par as men,” Lindsay says. “Any time you have a woman succeeding in politics, that gives another woman something to look up to.”

Janet Clark, president of the east Alabama chapter of the League of Women Voters, says 2008 could likely be a watershed moment for American women in politics. She’s seeing younger women — not just college students, but younger wives and mothers — assert themselves.

Clark became involved in politics during the 1970s as part of the National Political Caucus for Women. In those days, the caucus was designed to get women trained to run for office. It was the era of the Equal Rights Amendment, a proposed change to the Constitution that would outlaw any discrimination between men or women. It was also a time when reproductive rights rallies were common in Washington. College campuses in the West and Northeast were hotbeds of activism — and the very environment that forged the political and social conscience of Hillary Rodham at Wellesley.

“I believe you have to participate or you get the system you deserve,” Clark says. “Back then, the issues were so hot, they drew women out on both sides.”

Back then, most women got their start in politics through the Caucus or the League, Clark remembers. These days, many of them have law degrees and connections fostered through professional societies.

Long gone are the days when women, especially Southern women, voted for whomever their daddy or the husband told them to, Leigh says.

“Soccer Mom” was a trite and overused phrase in the 1996 election year that referred to suburban mothers and their voting clout. It might have been, in itself, a sexist term used to categorize a coveted voting sector, but it did show the national media were aware of women and their political clout.

Leigh’s children are what led her to political activism. Her son was in high school when he developed a keen interest in politics and did some work for Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile, in Washington. Then her daughter got involved on her college campus.

“They were speaking out, and I felt like it was time that I spoke out and make a difference,” Leigh says. “I saw that there was a place for women to step up and be heard. We couldn’t just sit by and let things go.”

As Lindsay puts it, women today have more opportunities than ever. The enthusiasm for the upcoming primary and November election is hard to ignore.

“There’s never been a year like this.” Mandel says. One thing that has been laid to rest is whether opponents would feel free to open-fire on a female candidate. It’s certainly possible that the more Clinton is perceived as a winner, as a potential threat from their point of view, the more intense the attacks, Mandel says.

It’s a campaign season that, depending on your state of mind, can symbolize how far a national and regional electorate has come — and, just as sharply, how American society still casts a pall fitting to the Stone Age.

Progressive thinkers, or people who like to tell themselves and others that they are progressive, would contend that the simple fact that the United States has a woman legitimately vying for a major party presidential nomination highlights the result of equal opportunity. See, they might nod, we didn’t need that Equal Rights Amendment after all. Given enough time, enough experience in the political and public service trenches, a woman can make her mark.

Yet this is the same county that, not three months ago, offered only the equivalent of a collective raised eyebrow when a female campaign supporter in South Carolina asked John McCain, “How do we beat the bitch?” Substitute the “n-word” for bitch. What about queer? Pick a noun the rest of polite society doesn’t use, at least not in public.

The reaction would scarcely have elicited a chuckle from the candidate and a “You go get ‘em, gal” endorsement from the men in the room.

“There would have been an explosion,” Mandel says. “The fact is, nasty talk about women has been permitted, is still permitted. People feel they can say things about a woman candidate — in public — that they would never say about another group.”

The political discord extends past conservative talk radio and television to the Internet, where some political analysts, men as well as women, express dismay at blatant misogyny directed toward Clinton. Disagree with her as a candidate all you want, Mandel says.

That’s your right.

But no other candidate has spawned the type of hateful, profane and oftentimes pornographic language that’s directed to get people to — in many sites’ own words — hate Hillary Clinton. Some are so vicious, they’d make a Klansman skittish.

Our political forerunners, the kind who taught their sons and daughters to exercise their rights, wouldn’t recognize such tactics.

Let alone understand what they’re meant to accomplish.

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