For women topping November ballot, equality's been long time coming in Massachusetts

Martha Coakley

Democrat gubernatorial nominee, state Attorney General Martha Coakley speaks at the party's unity breakfast Wednesday, Sept. 10, 2014, in Boston, after winning Tuesday's primary. In the background are treasurer nominee Deb Goldberg and auditor Suzanne Bump. (AP Photo/Josh Reynolds)

(Josh Reynolds)

BOSTON - When Lois Pines ran for attorney general in 1998, she had a record as one of the state's most effective legislators. Yet she was derided by critics as "too shrill." She narrowly lost the Democratic primary to Thomas Reilly.

Michael Goldman, a veteran Democratic political consultant for many of the state's top politicians, including Pines, said, "I can tell you I've never heard a man called shrill."

On Tuesday, three Democratic women won competitive primaries to win their party's nomination for statewide office.

Martha Coakley is the Democratic nominee for governor. If successful, she will become the first woman elected Massachusetts governor.

Maura Healey won the Democratic nomination for attorney general and Deb Goldberg for treasurer. Karyn Polito was uncontested as the Republican Party's candidate for lieutenant governor. Incumbent auditor Suzanne Bump was uncontested in the Democratic primary, as was her Republican challenger Patricia Saint Aubin.

The candidates themselves have placed little emphasis on gender, though Coakley drew cheers on primary night when she referred to the next governor as "she." But those who have followed the state's political process for years say the fact that gender is no longer a major issue is in itself remarkable.

Goldman, who advises Healey, said female candidates previously have been tagged as too aggressive, too distant, too shrill or too much of an insider. "There always seemed to be a reason to say no," Goldman said.

"The women who were successful in September owe a lot to the women who preceded them," Goldman said. "Maura Healey never had to answer the question of why she was running for attorney general because she's a woman, because Martha Coakley won that battle for her. No one asked Deb Goldberg why she's running for treasurer, because Shannon O'Brien won that battle for her. No one asked Karyn Polito why she's running, because Jane Swift and Kerry Healey won that battle for her."

One does not have to look too far back to find "firsts" involving women in Massachusetts. The first woman elected to statewide office was Democrat Evelyn Murphy who was elected lieutenant governor in 1986. The first woman to serve as governor was Swift, a Republican who took over when Gov. Paul Celluci was made an ambassador in 2001. Democrat Elizabeth Warren became the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate in 2012.

"Our state is one with a progressive reputation, but when it comes to women in politics, we haven't walked the walk in Massachusetts," said Adrienne Kimmell, executive director of The Barbara Lee Family Foundation, which works to increase women's participation in politics.

The Barbara Lee Family Foundation has for years chronicled the challenges facing female candidates. According to the foundation's research, women have at times been seen as "too tough" and therefore unlikeable, and have struggled to display strength without putting off male voters. Female candidates' appearances are scrutinized more closely than men's. Qualifications and likeability are tied together for female candidates in a way they aren't for men.

"Unfortunately, being unlikeable is a real ding against (women) in the eyes of voters, which is not the same for men," Kimmell said.

O'Brien, a Democrat, was elected treasurer in 1998 on her second run for the office, then lost the 2002 gubernatorial race to Republican Mitt Romney. O'Brien said women face different challenges than men running for executive office. "Women have a higher hurdle to get over when it comes to demonstrating that they both have the leadership qualities that people want in an executive, the personal strength that's needed to be an executive leader, and then not go too far and be considered almost too tough," O'Brien said.

"Women are still working to establish what is that model, what is the image of a woman leader, and it's still being formed in people's minds," O'Brien said.

O'Brien said Massachusetts is similar to New York and other urban states with expensive media markets where female candidates must get beyond the hurdle of image and personality and also raise millions of dollars. "You can have a woman who's a great candidate, who has leadership ability, but pulling in that money is a big challenge," O'Brien said.

Murphy said when she was running in 1986, she held a fundraiser for women that raised $100,000. The idea of women raising money from women was so novel that it became a national story and candidates on the West Coast picked up the idea.

Goldman recalled that in 1990, when Murphy was running for governor, she kicked off her campaign with the biggest single fundraiser a Massachusetts woman had ever held, raising $125,000 from 125 women. Two weeks later, her opponent, former attorney general Frank Bellotti, raised $900,000 in one fundraiser. (Neither would win the Democratic nomination.)

Today, professional fundraisers continue to note the difficulty in getting women to make large donations to political campaigns.

Pines is among the state's female trailblazers. In 1973, she was one of eight women serving in the 240-member state legislature. She served in the State House or Senate for nearly two decades. But she struggled to win higher office. She lost a 1978 Democratic primary for secretary of the commonwealth by 7,000 votes. She lost the 1998 Democratic primary for attorney general by 30,000 votes and lost a primary for lieutenant governor four years later.

"It's always seemed to me looking at every race until recently that women had to work a lot harder to persuade voters that they were capable of good decision making," Pines said.

Pines said people knew her in her district, but she had trouble winning over voters outside her district. "Unbelievably, people would say to you, 'Oh no, I'm not going to have a woman do that job,'" Pines said.

"I used to say we'll have achieved equality when a woman can be elected and be as dumb as the ordinary male," Pines said. "Because a woman always had to be better. She couldn't be as good as the ordinary legislator. She had to be better than they were for people to be willing to vote for her."

Political observers say Tuesday's ballot is emblematic of a cultural shift. There are new models of female leaders today both nationally and in Massachusetts - Warren, Massachusetts Senate President Therese Murray, Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice. There are more women leading in the corporate world. Kerry Healey, the former Republican lieutenant governor under Romney, is now the first female president of Babson College. (Kerry Healey declined to comment for this story, saying she is no longer involved in politics.)

Organizations like the Cambridge-based Barbara Lee Family Foundation and the Center for Women in Politics and Public Policy at UMass Boston have supported women running for public office. Murphy said those organizations have helped develop a "farm team" of experienced women. "Out of that pipeline, you have a much larger field of women who are interested in running for office," Murphy said.

There are also women who have run multiple times and built up a network of statewide contacts. Goldberg previously ran for lieutenant governor. Polito previously ran for treasurer. Coakley won two elections for attorney general and lost a U.S. Senate race.

Coakley, Polito, Goldberg and Maura Healey were all able to run effective fundraising campaigns during the primary.

Murphy said she sees the breakthrough in the current election as the number of women atop the ballot. "It's not one woman here or one woman there," she said. "Now you have women up and down the ticket."

Steve Kerrigan, the openly gay Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor, acknowledged the unique demographics atop the Democratic ticket at a unity breakfast on Wednesday.

"Yesterday, the winners were three women and a gay guy," Kerrigan said. "And to think we all woke up this morning and that wasn't big news is true testament to the work that we have done."