Simms, Ruth Hanna McCormick, 1880-1944

<p>For more than three decades Ruth Hanna McCormick campaigned as the daughter of Republican kingmaker and Ohio Senator Marcus Alonzo (Mark) Hanna, as the wife of U.S. Representative and Senator Medill McCormick, and as a Grand Old Party (GOP) leader herself. In the late 1920s she forged a personal political machine, a network of Illinois Republican women’s clubs potent enough to propel her into elected office. “I don’t want to be appointed to anything,” McCormick said when asked if she would accept a prominent diplomatic or government post. “That wouldn’t appeal to me. I want to be elected in a fair fight on a clean-cut issue.”</p>

<p>Ruth Hanna was born in Cleveland, Ohio, on March 27, 1880, one of Marcus Hanna and Charlotte Augusta Rhodes Hanna’s three children. Born into privilege, Ruth Hanna received an elite private school education. In 1896 Ruth accompanied her father while he waged successful campaigns as a U.S. Senate candidate and as manager for Republican presidential candidate, William McKinley. Instead of heading off to college, Ruth followed Senator Hanna to Washington, DC, where she served as his personal secretary. On June 10, 1903, Ruth Hanna married Joseph Medill McCormick, scion of the family that owned the <i>Chicago Tribune</i>. The McCormicks raised three children: Katherine (Katrina), John, and Ruth. Medill McCormick served for eight years as the <i>Tribune</i> publisher. The couple participated in various progressive reform activities and lived in the University of Chicago Settlement House, an experience that deepened Ruth McCormick’s concern for the welfare of women and children. Unable to purchase a special type of milk needed by one of her children, and appalled by the unsanitary conditions in Illinois dairies, she opened a dairy and breeding farm near Byron, Illinois, to produce sanitary milk.</p>

<p>In 1912 Medill McCormick won the first of two terms in the Illinois legislature as a Progressive-Republican. In Springfield, Ruth was a lobbyist who helped to pass the Illinois Equal Suffrage Act in 1913, a measure ensuring women the vote in municipal and presidential elections. It marked the first time a state east of the Mississippi granted that right.5 In 1913 McCormick succeeded the confrontational Alice Paul as chair of the Congressional Committee of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA). She promoted pro-suffrage congressional candidates at the state level. Medill McCormick, meanwhile, was elected in 1916 to the U.S. House from Illinois and, in 1918, to the U.S. Senate by defeating Democratic Whip James Hamilton Lewis.

<p>Ruth Hanna McCormick (née Ruth Hanna, also known as Ruth Hanna McCormick Simms; March 27, 1880 – December 31, 1944), was an American politician, activist, and publisher. She served one term in the United States House of Representatives, winning an at-large seat in Illinois in 1928. She gave up the chance to run for re-election to seek a United States Senate seat from Illinois. She defeated the incumbent, Senator Charles S. Deneen, in the Republican primary, becoming the first female Senate candidate for a major party. McCormick lost the general election. A decade later, she became the first woman to manage a presidential campaign, although her candidate, Thomas E. Dewey, failed to capture his party's nomination.</p>

<p>Politics were a part of McCormick's life from an early age. She was the daughter of Mark Hanna, a Senator and politician who was instrumental in the election of President William McKinley. McCormick learned politics by watching her father, and put those lessons to use fighting for causes such as women's suffrage and improved working conditions for women. McCormick was instrumental in passing a partial suffrage law in Illinois in 1913, allowing women to vote in municipal and Presidential elections. She also married two politicians, Senator Medill McCormick and, after Senator McCormick's death, Congressman Albert Gallatin Simms. McCormick had the fame, the background and the determination to build a career on the new opportunities for women in high level politics. As a spokesperson for the suffrage and for the Republican party, she made political activism attractive for partisan women.</p>

<p>McCormick's endeavors were not limited to politics. Throughout her life, she maintained an interest in agriculture. She owned and operated ranches in Illinois, New Mexico, and Colorado. She also owned several newspapers, founding the Rockford Consolidated Newspapers in Rockford, Illinois.</p>