In August, 1920, American women finally won the right to vote. In Warren Township they immediately began to exercise that right. The official returns for the 1916 November General Election (a presidential year) showed that the "Whole number of names on the signature copy registers and registers of voters" in Warren Township was 303. The numbers for 1917, 1918, and 1919 were 300, 283, and 291. However, for the 1920 General Election the number was 561--almost double the previous year's. The following year it rose to 623, and it was 675 by 1922 (a gubernatorial election year). Although it is not now possible to learn who those new voters were who appeared for the 1920 election (since registration records are not kept permanently by the Somerset County Board of Elections) it is reasonable to infer that most of them were women registering as a result of the nineteenth amendment to the United States Constitution. In 1916 Warren had given the majority to the Republican presidential electors 62% to 38%; the 1919 gubernatorial election saw the Republican candidate winning by 59% to 41%. In 1920 The Republican presidential electors won locally 74% to 26%. The party inclination of the electorate seemed to remain the same with women participating; the difference was in the larger numbers. Although Warren women have been active as voters and as political party workers in the intervening 75 years, a review of local political election activity reveals that only a handful took what some early suffragists regarded as the next logical step--entering the political arena as candidates and becoming office holders. Of the 99 three-year terms on the Warren Township Committee that have been up for election since woman's suffrage, only 11 were held in full or part by a woman and in only eight other instances did a woman vie for a Township Committee seat but fail to gain it. In contrast to this meager portion of political office-holding however, Warren women did achieve an early entry into the non-political Board of Education and for many years have been a significant presence on it. (Perhaps both men and women viewed it more acceptable for women to be involved with a body that dealt with schools and children.) No woman was elected to the local governing body, the Township Committee, until Jacqueline Henderson led a field of five candidates to win one of the two seats at stake in the 1973 General Election. No candidate had filed for the Democratic Primary, but Henderson garnered enough votes in a contested write-in campaign to win that party's nomination. The Courier News mentioned casually that she was "the township's first woman committeeman" and the Echoes-Sentinel did not allude to her sex at all in the coverage of her victory, but both newspapers highlighted her party affiliation, she being, as the Echoes-Sentinel put it, "the first Democrat elected to the committee in more than a decade." The following year, Susie Boyce was elected to a one-year unexpired term on the Republican ticket. She subsequently won full terms in the elections of 1975, 1978, 1982, 1985, 1988 and 1991. A second Democratic woman, Barbara Evans, won a Township Committee seat in the election of 1975. In 1979 Annabelle Kriegel (Republican) became the fourth woman elected to the Township Committee and in 1993 Ann Marie Lynch (Republican) the fifth. Most recently, Carolann Garafola won the 1995 Republican Primary and also the November, 1995, General Election. So altogether six women have served on the Warren Township Committee. The only women to ever be elected as chairman of the Township Committee, and hence Mayor of Warren Township, were Susie Boyce (1978 and 1986) and Annabelle Kriegel (1982). Although the Township Committee membership is the highest local political office, there used to be other positions for which women might be General Election candidates. Collector of Taxes, Tax Assessor, and Township Clerk were elective positions until recently. The distinction of being the first woman ever elected to public political (non-school) office in the Township probably belongs to Myrtle Conover, who was elected as the Republican candidate for Collector of Taxes in 1945. In 1949 Elsie Steffens was the successful Republican candidate for Collector, defeating the male Democratic opponent 757 to 389. She was reelected in 1953, 1957 and 1961. November 1963 saw four female candidates-Jeanne Kuhlthau (Republican) and Juanita Billerman (Democrat) vying for Township Clerk and Myrtle Conover and Dorothy Templin for Collector. Kuhlthau and Conover were the winners. In 1965 Mrs. Conover ran again on the Republican ticket, this time defeating Democrat Helen Drozd. Muriel Kuell (Republican) was elected Collector in 1970 and 1974. In 1966 Kuhlthau successfully ran for Township Clerk again, this time against Helen Drozd (Democrat). Pearl Kerwin ran successfully for Tax Assessor as an independent in the 1970 General Election. She was reelected Assessor in 1974 as a Republican candidate. Twice in Warren's history a Charter Study question has been on the ballot, passing both times. Voters vote on the question and also for five candidates for Charter Study Commission Member; the five winners will serve if the question itself carries. In 1954 there were only five candidates. One of them was Emma Jo Cain, and she became a member of the commission. In 1974 there were ten candidates for the five places. Three of these were women: Eileen A. Steitz, Wanda A. Baltadonis, and Judith D. Musser. Musser was one of the five winners who served. The women discussed above are those who ran for offices that are decided in General Elections (including those running in Primary Elections in hopes of ultimately reaching the November contest). There are two other opportunities for candidacy open--school board elections and political party offices in Primary Elections. Warren women appear to have been participants in these more frequently than in the General Elections As early as 1921 Lucy Lesser was one of four nominees for school trustee, but she lost to the three men candidates. In 1922 Mrs. Sol Gopen was one of seven candidates for three school positions but failed of election. (Through 1925 school elections were held during a meeting advertised to voters and held in Fairview Hall; nominations were made from the floor and all present voted. Beginning in 1926 there were polling places in the schools, with printed ballots at least as early as 1928.) In 1928 Helen Wittman was one of seven running for three full terms and she too failed to win. In another school race that year, however, Minnie A. Van Deusen ran against William G. Lauer for a one-year unexpired term and was elected, becoming the first woman on Warren's Board of Education after woman suffrage. The next year Helen Wittman tried again and won. Julia K. Lang was elected in 1930, so as of March, 1930, there were two women on the Warren Board, which in those days, as now, consisted of nine members serving three-year terms. Laurabell M. Goodwin won a seat in the school election of 1932. She was elected vice-chairman of the board several years. In 1934 Mrs. Marion Morton ran in a field of five but did not win. The school board experience, where women ran unsuccessfully before one finally achieved a win, had also been the case with the Township Committee. Although Henderson was the first woman to be elected, she was not the first woman to seek a seat. In 1962 Lillian Stanton was the Democratic candidate for an unexpired term and the first woman on the ballot for the local governing body, but she was defeated in November. In 1968 Ruth Mohyla became a Democratic candidate for Township Committee in an uncontested Primary Election but failed to win in the fall. Jeannette Peterson was an unsuccessful Democratic candidate in 1974. Others who had unsuccessful campaigns were: Susie Boyce and Wanda Baltadonis, who lost Republican Primaries in 1981 and 1992 respectively; Pamela Kaufelt and Rebecca Perkins, who were nominated as the Democratic candidates in 1977 and 1990 but were defeated in the General Election; and Irene Evans, who was a contender in the write-in Democratic Primary race won by Henderson in 1973. |