Sullivan, Leonor K. (Leonor Kretzer), 1902-1988

<p>Leonor Kretzer Sullivan (August 21, 1902 – September 1, 1988) was a member of the United States House of Representatives from Missouri. She was a Democrat and the first woman in Congress from Missouri.</p>

<p>Born Leonor Kretzer in St. Louis, Missouri, three of her grandparents were German immigrants. Sullivan attended Washington University in St. Louis and was a teacher and director at St. Louis Comptometer school. She was married to John B. Sullivan, who served four terms in Congress, and she served as his administrative aide. Following her husband's death in 1951, she served as an aide to Congressman Leonard Irving until she left to run for Congress herself in 1952. She was re-elected eleven times. In Congress, she served for many years as Secretary of the House Democratic Caucus.</p>

<p>Sullivan helped create the food stamp program, which was opposed by Agriculture Secretary Ezra Taft Benson and became law in the 1960s during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations.</p>

<p>As one of America’s early consumer advocates, Leonor K. Sullivan authored many of the protective laws that Americans have come to take for granted. Initially, it was a lonely undertaking. As Representative Sullivan recalled of her early years in Congress, “Those of us interested in consumer legislation could have caucused in an elevator.” During her 12 terms in Congress, Sullivan left her mark on a variety of issues, becoming one of the more influential Congresswomen to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives.</p>

<p>Leonor Alice Kretzer was born on August 21, 1902, in St. Louis, Missouri, one of nine children of Frederick William Kretzer and Nora (Jostrand) Kretzer. Her father was a second-generation German tailor. Since her parents did not have the resources to send her to college, Kretzer worked at a local telephone company and took night classes at Washington University in St. Louis, focusing on vocational psychology. During the 1930s, she worked as an instructor in business and accounting at the St. Louis Comptometer School; she later became placement director there before becoming director of the St. Louis Business School. On December 27, 1941, she married John Berchmans Sullivan, a freshman Congressman from St. Louis. Leonor Sullivan worked as her husband’s administrative assistant and campaign manager in five primary and election campaigns; during that time, her husband was defeated twice, only to be returned to office in the subsequent election.</p>

<p>When John Sullivan died on January 29, 1951, Missouri Democratic leaders refused to nominate Leonor Sullivan to run in the special election to fill the vacancy. “We don’t have anything against you,” they told Sullivan, “we just want to win.” Their chosen candidate, Harry Schendel, lost to Republican Claude Ignatius Bakewell. Leonor Sullivan, meanwhile, took a year-long position as an administrative aide to Missouri Representative Theodore Leonard Irving because she lacked the funds to amass her own congressional campaign without the backing of the Democratic Party. In 1952, Sullivan announced her candidacy for her husband’s reapportioned district. She defeated seven contenders in the Democratic primary, including the party-endorsed candidate, who made a campaign promise that if elected, he would give Sullivan a job on his staff. Running in the general election as “Mrs. John B. Sullivan,” she defeated her Republican opponent, Bakewell, by a two-to-one margin, to earn a seat in the 83rd Congress (1953–1955). During the campaign, Sullivan claimed greater experience and qualification than the incumbent because of her years in Washington working for her husband’s office, a message that resonated with many of the late Congressman’s former supporters. After that campaign, Sullivan, the first woman elected to Congress from her state (and the only one until the 1990s), was never seriously challenged; she captured her next 11 elections with between 65 and 79 percent of the vote.</p>