On November 8, 1924, Wyoming elected Nellie Tayloe Ross as governor, making her the first woman to hold a U.S. governorship. She ran to complete the term of her husband, Governor William B. Ross, who had died in office, and won by a wide margin on a platform emphasizing tax relief and support for agriculture, a milestone just four years after the Nineteenth Amendment granted women the vote.
Nellie Tayloe Ross had never held elected office and had not sought the nomination; Wyoming's Democratic Party approached her after her husband William's sudden death from appendicitis complications in October 1924, hoping to capitalize on sympathy and her steady public presence during his term. She accepted reluctantly, campaigning quietly from her home rather than on the stump, and won the special election on November 8, 1924, defeating Republican Eugene Sullivan by a comfortable margin.
Her victory came the very same day that Miriam "Ma" Ferguson won the governorship of Texas, but because Wyoming's polls closed earlier, Ross is recorded as the first woman inaugurated as a U.S. governor, taking office on January 5, 1925, fifteen days ahead of Ferguson. Wyoming, fittingly, had been the first territory to grant women full voting rights back in 1869, decades before the federal amendment.
Ross served a single two-year term focused on fiscal conservatism and did not win reelection in 1926, but her career continued: in 1933 Franklin Roosevelt appointed her the first female director of the U.S. Mint, a post she held for two decades, overseeing the nation's gold and silver reserves through the Depression and World War II. She lived to age 101, a living link between the suffrage movement and the mid-twentieth century.
Key people: Nellie Tayloe Ross, William B. Ross