Elizabeth Dole is probably the most famous woman in American political history and the only woman to be nominated by a major party for the presidency. Born Mary Elizabeth Alexander Hanford, she originally was a Democrat, who worked in both the Johnson and Humphrey administrations, where she met Senator Bob Dole, who had recently divorced his first wife. An unlikely political friendship between the North Carolina Democrat and Kansas Republican 13 years her elder became a courtship and the two were married in 1975, with the new Mrs. Dole becoming a Republican as well. A year later, she became Second Lady after her husband's election to the vice presidency and eight years later, First Lady of the United States.
Dole, more than any other First Lady since Edith Wilson (who screened all matters of state following her husband's incapacitation by a stroke) involved herself with the administration in addition to the traditional roles expected of a First Lady. Serving as both one of her husband's most important advisers and liaison to women's groups across the country, Dole’s outspoken efforts to get Congress to allocate money to help with the fallout from the Kahuta disaster led to her being praised across the political spectrum. This was instrumental in the decision of the American Red Cross to offer her its presidency a year after her husband's defeat in his re-election bid, a role she would fill for almost eight years.
With her status as a former First Lady and on good terms with many in the business community, Dole was an outstanding fundraiser for the organization. With a relatively weak bench in North Carolina, Republican leaders asked Dole to run against incumbent Senator Harvey Gantt in 1996. Moving back to the state for the first time since 1959, the popular former First Lady rode Pete Wilson's coattails to victory, becoming the first female senator from the Tarheel State in the process as well as the first former First Lady to win elected office in her own right.
She was a loyal supporter of the Wilson administration in the Senate and was re-elected to a landslide victory in 2002. Soon afterwards, spurred on by her high name recognition and popularity and former Vice President Lamar Alexander's low numbers in polling match-ups with President Gephardt, Dole threw her hat into the ring for the Republican nomination for the presidency in 2004. A brutal, mudslinging campaign ensued that, among other things, resulted in whispers of marital problems between the former First Couple owing to ex-President Dole's absence from much of the campaign trail due to the grueling schedule being too much for an octogenarian man.
Dole won and ran an unusual general election campaign: picking well-respected moderate South Dakota Senator Larry Pressler as her running mate, then refusing to run to the right to assure conservatives (although she did pledge to continue the crackdown on illegal immigration similarly to former President Wilson's pledge and efforts). The campaign's attempt to play on homophobic and anti-transgender prejudice late in the campaign backfired spectacularly and, alongside the alienation of Hispanics from the Republican ticket continuing from Wilson and the humming economy led to Gephardt winning a comfortable re-election.
Following her defeat, Dole returned to the Senate and was a major sponsor both of the Immigration Reform Act of 2006 and a co-sponsor of the failed attempt at comprehensive energy reform. She opted to retire rather than seek a third term, retiring to Kansas with her husband. With both her husband and former president Bush too frail to travel to Deval Patrick's inauguration, she and Bush's son George W. stood on the dais in their place as the nation's first black president was sworn in.
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