In Elderly Women, Clinton Sees an Electoral Edge [View All]

NYT: In Elderly Women, Clinton Sees an Electoral Edge
By PATRICK HEALY
Published: November 27, 2007

DES MOINES, Iowa, Nov. 26 — They usually sit in the front row — to hear her better, to see her better and to make sure they have a chance to shake her hand. Some lean on canes. Some have traveled a great distance. Some have never been to a political event before. The first one who shared her story with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton was Ruth Smith, 87. She drove 160 miles to Des Moines from Buffalo Center to attend Mrs. Clinton’s first rally in Iowa as a presidential candidate and went up to her afterward.

“I told her that my grandmother was the first person in town to vote, and my mother was the second,” said Mrs. Smith, who was born three months before the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920. “And I told her I was born before women could vote, and I want to live long enough to see a woman in the White House.”

Since then Mrs. Smith’s story has become a grace note in Mrs. Clinton’s stump speech. At the same time, the many other elderly women who turn out for Clinton campaign events have become welcome set pieces, visibly demonstrating the candidate’s effort to highlight her sex and her overtures to female voters, whom the campaign is counting on to propel her to the Democratic presidential nomination. Many young women have been enthusiastic supporters, but Mrs. Clinton, of New York, has shown particular pride in the women in their 70s, 80s and 90s at her events. She spends extra time with them on the rope line and repeats their stories to audiences.

“A couple of weeks ago in New Hampshire, a woman said, ‘I’m 98 years old, this will probably be my last election, we need to hurry up,’” Mrs. Clinton recounted recently in Vinton, Iowa. “And I said, ‘I don’t know, I may need you for my re-election.’ And she said, ‘Well, my doctor just put in a new pacemaker, and she says it’s good for seven years.’”

The Clinton campaign is courting these women in Iowa as the senator seeks an edge in a three-way fight with Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and John Edwards of North Carolina to win the state’s caucuses on Jan. 3. According to some opinion polls, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama are running roughly even among female voters here; she is behind Mr. Obama and Mr. Edwards among men. So the Clinton campaign hopes to find an advantage with older women, who might feel an emotional bond with Mrs. Clinton — seeing her like a daughter or seeing something of themselves in her....

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/27/us/politics/27ladies.html?_r=1&oref=slogin