THE FIRST WOMAN to ever serve as governor in the United States, Carrie Shelton, found herself in Oregon’s top office through a 1909 game of political musical chairs, a decade before women even had the right to vote. More than 90 years later, Jane Swift would find herself in the same position in Massachusetts, which would wait another 20 years to finally elect a woman to the post.
Swift’s years in elected office were marked by normal political scrutiny plus a fog of turn-of-the century skepticism that a young woman or a new mother could do the job. Now, with almost all of the state’s top constitutional offices held by women, the state and its media have been engaged in some self-reflection, considering the way different genders and their roles are scrutinized.
“I think it’s totally changed,” Swift said of the way women in political public life are discussed. “It is no longer like being the bearded lady in the circus,” she said on The Codcast.
Swift, a Republican from Western Mass. who was elected lieutenant governor in 1998, became the state’s first female governor in 2001 after Gov. Paul Cellucci stepped down to become President George H.W. Bush’s ambassador to Canada. She was 36, pregnant with twins, and already weathered ethical dust-ups as lieutenant governor for asking aides to babysit her 14-month-old daughter in her office and using a state helicopter to fly home to her sick child – choices that Swift is quick to acknowledge were mistakes, but not uncomplicated ones.
But other choices also drew public side-eyes, like her late husband Chuck choosing to be a stay-at-home father as first gentleman of the state, or Swift conducting state business through speakerphone from her bed after giving birth.
“No subsequent female governors have been in exactly the same time in their life that I was,” Swift notes. “But I think, were we to have one now in exactly the same situation, we would cover it differently. When I think about the hours we wasted thinking through how to message what now would be such a normal thing … you know, everybody’s Zooming in, they’re voting through Zoom in both the House and the Senate. And we had to go through hours and hours of convincing the governor’s council that I could call in on a Wednesday.”
When Swift, at 25, stepped into the Massachusetts state Senate in 1990, she was the youngest woman to ever hold the office. Less than a third of the state’s lawmakers are women now, and Swift still holds the title for youngest woman in the Senate.
“The thing that I want folks to know – that I didn’t know when I was running and if I had, I may not have run – is I was also only the 13th woman to ever serve in the Massachusetts Senate,” Swift said. “So it was not hard to be the youngest. And that’s shocking, extraordinary, and pathetic, if you think about the fact that Massachusetts has the longest running continuous legislative body in the country. Think about how far we’ve come since then.”
Facing strong political headwinds, she opted against running to keep the governor’s office in 2002, and largely shifted out of the public eye.
Her presence these days is most keenly felt in her education advocacy, her commentary on the perception of women in public life, and her openness about grieving her husband, who died almost two years ago after a long struggle with kidney disease.
Swift is even wading into the thorny debate over pharmacy benefit managers – intermediaries between pharmaceutical manufacturers and insurance providers – testifying before the Legislature that her daughter Lauren’s struggle with juvenile arthritis and autoimmune complications plunged the family into regular and frustrating interactions with the middlemen that can be barriers to accessing and affording certain prescription drugs.
“I’m tempted and would like to maybe regulate them out of business, even though I’m a Republican, because I’m so furious as a mother,” Swift said, somewhat joking. “But that’s not gonna happen. But there should be transparency. It shouldn’t have taken a former governor having to have her daughter’s health imperiled and having to spend hours and hours and hours talking to people all over the country to figure this out.”
While dealing with her daughter’s health travails and staying busy as the new president of the nonprofit Education at Work, Swift has been going through a process of public grieving. Her Substack newsletter explores the pain, the acts of gratitude, and the unexpected welling of memory that come with losing someone dear.
She was taken aback by “the physicality of the grief” and said “it never completely goes away. But the message I also have been trying to bring to people, because so many people are distraught, whether it’s because of Covid or politics or the terrible things happening in conflicts around the world now is about hope. Because even amidst the worst things that happen and the grief that doesn’t end, there is a beauty and a hope about life, that I at times wasn’t sure I could believe in for my daughters or myself.”