A Fighting Chance

The Woman Question that had come up earlier in the campaign now returned with a vengeance, only this time it was framed a little differently. Now it was one version or another of “What is up with you women this year?”


What was up? Simple: Women were fired up. It’s hard to describe the energy I felt among women on the campaign trail that fall. Old and young, married and single, straight and gay. Women poured into our campaign offices, and huge numbers showed up at our events. Senator Barbara Mikulski, the longest-serving woman in the history of the US Senate and a longtime force on women’s issues, came to Massachusetts to rally the troops. Ethel Kennedy—well into her eighties but still full of spirit—showed up with her daughter Rory and wowed the volunteers. High school students volunteered alongside women who had been retired for twenty years or more. Parents brought baby girls, plopped them in my arms, and whipped out their cameras.

For months now, whenever I met a little girl on the campaign trail, I would bend down, take her hand, and tell her quietly, “I’m Elizabeth and I’m running for Senate, because that’s what girls do.” Now that statement took on special significance. More parents than ever asked for pictures, and I got to hold tiny newborns and kneel down to do pinky promises with shy little girls.

At some point in October, I met a marvelous old lady when her granddaughter pushed her wheelchair over to me. She was tiny and frail, but she took my hand and smiled impishly. “I’m dying,” she said, “but not too fast. I plan to see you win.”

Early on, our campaign team had taken a close look at Scott Brown’s record on women’s issues. It wasn’t terrible. He had broken with his party to support the Violence Against Women Act. He said he was prochoice, although he didn’t turn down the support from the prolife groups that endorsed him. But he had voted against a bill for equal pay for equal work, and he was a cosponsor of the Blunt Amendment. More important, he supported a national Republican leadership that seemed hell-bent on rolling right over women’s rights. When it came to women’s issues, a fair assessment of Brown’s voting record would be “pretty good some of the time”—but why should that be good enough?

When Senator Brown and I met for our second debate, women’s issues came up in a surprising way. Somewhere toward the middle of the debate, the moderator asked us to name our favorite Supreme Court justice. Brown’s response: Justice Antonin Scalia. The ripple through the audience was instantaneous: Scalia? The most outspoken, conservative, anti-choice, anti-woman justice on the Court—that’s the justice Scott Brown liked best? A few people started to boo, and Senator Brown backtracked, naming in quick succession Justices Kennedy, Roberts, and Sotomayor. As he tried to recover, the cameras caught the expression on my face. I looked like I was about to cough up a hairball. (I felt like it, too.) When my turn came, I named the prochoice woman on the Court whom Brown had voted against: Elena Kagan.

On October 10, when Brown and I met in Springfield for the third debate, women’s issues surged to the front once again. In response to a question, Brown repeated a line he had used often about how he lived in a houseful of women and that he had long fought for women’s rights. I said I had no doubt that Senator Brown was a good husband and a good father to his two daughters. But I pointed out that in Washington, he voted on laws that affect all our daughters:



? He’s had exactly one chance to vote for equal pay for equal work, and he voted no.

? He had exactly one chance to vote for insurance coverage for birth control and other preventive services for women. He voted no.

? He had exactly one chance to vote for a prochoice woman—from Massachusetts—to the United States Supreme Court, and he voted no.

Those were bad votes for women, and it felt right to say so. The way I saw it, women deserved to be represented by someone they could count on, not some of the time, but all of the time.

I could feel the momentum of our campaign building, almost like a physical force. Our team was so excited that sometimes it felt as if there were lightning in the air. We knew that a lot of people were starting to focus intently on this race; they had come to understand how much their vote would matter.

Meanwhile, the polls stayed close. Some showed me ahead, some showed Brown still in the lead, and others had us within a point or two of each other. We were going to fight this all the way to the end.





Sweet Otis