M. Peterson, 94; Republican Urged Moderate Direction for Party

[PyrateJohn]

M. Peterson, 94; Republican Urged Moderate Direction for Party


By Patricia Sullivan, Washington Post Staff Writer


Elly M. Peterson, 94, who as the Republican National Committee co-
chairman during the 1960s and 1970s was one of the highest-ranking
women in her party, died of complications from an infection June 9
[2008] at La Villa Grande Care Center in Grand Junction, Colorado.


A moderate Republican who launched outreach efforts to African
Americans, Mrs. Peterson became co-director of ERAmerica in 1976 as
the unsuccessful effort to pass the Equal Rights Amendment reached
its
high-water mark.


She also battled an attempt by conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly
to seize control of the National Federation of Republican Women in
1972. That fight, Mrs. Peterson's biographer Sara Fitzgerald said,
resulted in Schlafly leaving the group to found the Eagle Forum,
which
became one of the prime opponents of the ERA.


Mrs. Peterson's efforts to retain a moderate faction in the
increasingly conservative party continued through the late 1970s,
when
she told a reporter after the 1977 National Women's Conference in
Houston [Texas], "We're coming out of this with a whole new breed of
women" who are potential recruits for the Republican Party "if we
just
don't label them as misfits and oddballs."


Described as warm and down-to-earth as well as a formidable
organizer,
Mrs. Peterson influenced a generation of women who would later seek
public office.


"She was a wonderful mentor to all the young people" at the RNC,
former New Jersey governor Christine Todd Whitman (R) said. "We all
called her 'Mother' because Elly was the mother hen who took care of
all of us. She didn't hesitate to do what needed to be done. You
didn't want to get in her way. . . . With Elly, anything was
possible,
and that made you think anything was possible."


At a time when female political activists were welcomed as volunteers
but disregarded when powerful jobs opened up, Mrs. Peterson became
the
first woman in numerous positions.


Starting in 1963, she was the first female state party chairman in
Michigan, the first woman in Michigan to be a major-party candidate
for the U.S. Senate and the first woman to address the Republican
National Convention. She was the first woman to co-chair the RNC
twice
and to serve as deputy campaign chairman for a presidential
candidate.


Mrs. Peterson fiercely resisted stereotyping, Washington Post
political columnist David Broder wrote in 1970, noting that her
"sheer
energy and capability won her right to operate at the full range of
her talents.


"It is, I think, accurate to say her abilities would have earned her
the national chairmanship, were it not for the unwritten sex barrier
that both parties have erected around the job," Broder wrote.
"Certainly, her organizational talents made her views as respected
and
her advice as sought-after among her colleagues in the party as
anyone
in the past decade."


In Michigan, Mrs. Peterson recruited young moderates to run for
office. Spotting an opportunity for her party, she opened year-round
GOP headquarters and neighborhood service offices in predominantly
black areas of Michigan cities in the 1960s and later tried to expand
the concept nationally.


She was recruited to run against the highly popular Sen. Philip A.
Hart (D-Mich.) in 1964 but lost in the Democratic landslide that
year.


Notwithstanding her personal political preferences, Mrs. Peterson had
many friends among Democrats. When she was co-chairman of ERAmerica
with Liz Carpenter, former press secretary and staff director for
Lady
Bird Johnson, the two shared a house in Washington [DC].


"Elly Peterson was a delight to work with, and she knew how to rally
Republicans behind the ERA," Carpenter said in a telephone interview
from her Texas home. "We almost made our goal of getting the ERA
passed but not quite. I wish we had another shot at it."


A strong supporter of abortion rights, Mrs. Peterson was a charter
member in the National Women's Political Caucus and lobbied President
Richard M. Nixon to appoint a woman to the U.S. Supreme Court. A
decade later, President Ronald Reagan nominated Sandra Day O'Connor
to
the high court.


Mrs. Peterson became disaffected with her party in 1980, when its
national platform was stripped of references about its historical
support for equal rights for women. Two years later, she rejected the
Republican candidate for governor, declaring him too conservative,
and
supported the successful Democratic candidate, James Blanchard.


She eventually identified herself as an independent, although she
closely followed the bid by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) for
the
Democratic presidential nomination over the past year, Fitzgerald
said.


Born Elly McMillan in New Berlin, Illinois, on June 5, 1914, she
graduated from what is now William Woods University in Fulton,
Missouir, and the old Suburban Business College in Oak Park,
Illinois.


She married in 1935, and when her husband joined the military during
World War II, Mrs. Peterson joined the American Red Cross. She spent
22 months in England, France and Germany, passing out 2,000 doughnuts
a day in a station hospital.


After the war, she and her husband moved to Charlotte, Michigan,
southwest of Lansing [Michigan]. She was active in the Congregational
Church and with the Red Cross until volunteering with the GOP state
central committee. She helped elect George Romney to the governor's
office in 1962 as she rose in the party hierarchy.


Her first stint with the RNC ran from fall 1963 to July 1964, when
she
began her Senate campaign. In 1965, she became Michigan's first
female
state Republican chairman, holding the job for four years.


She returned to Washington [DC] in 1969 for another two-year stint at
the RNC. She served as deputy campaign chairman for Gerald R. Ford's
losing presidential campaign in 1976.


Her husband, retired Army Col. William M. Peterson, died in 1994. She
had no immediate family survivors.