Standing in the Rainbow - Fannie Flagg [178]
LET THE LITTLE LADY RUN![BR /]HARRY S. TRUMAN
Earl Finley was in a fit. Not only was Truman on her side, but public sentiment was running higher and higher against them. As he paced the room he ranted at the top of his voice to the men at the table, who sat motionless. “Dammit to hell, they’ve got our asses in a sling. Why? I’ll tell you why. You can’t insult a widow with two kids on television, that’s why. You can’t touch her. If you don’t let her run like a man, you’re a no-good son of a bitch and if you do treat her like a man, you’re a no-good son of a bitch. It’s frigging emotional blackmail,” he said, stopping to pound the table with his fist.
At the end of the day, they had no choice but to dump Carnie Boofer and let the little lady run.
The Rooster May Crow but It’s the Hen That Lays the Egg
Even though Betty Raye was now running on the Democratic ticket again, the public-opinion pollsters’ opinion was that she still had no hope of winning.
Vita had believed that. But when she saw what the response to Dorothy’s show had been, it gave her an idea to do something that had never been done before in the history of the state or in the entire country, for that matter. They would forget trying to convince and beg the men to take her candidacy seriously and go after the women’s vote. It was a slim chance but it was the only one they had. This approach had been an old trick of Hamm’s. Vita would run Betty Raye as the underdog and the more she was attacked for being a woman, the better.
The big push was on and the newspapers and the other candidates pushed back, making the same mistake Carnie Boofer had. Some said she was unqualified.
One man said, “All she has to offer the state is a ‘Kitchen Cabinet.’ ” Once the national press picked it up, as Vita had hoped they would, telegrams for Betty Raye started pouring in from everywhere.
GOOD LUCK. I AM PULLING FOR YOU. —MAMIE EISENHOWER BEST OF LUCK. —PATTY, MAXENE, AND LAVERNE ANDREWS WISHING YOU THE BEST. —MRS. LURLEEN WALLACE BEHIND YOU IN EVERY WAY. —LADY BIRD JOHNSON
But the telegram that absolutely floored Betty Raye was from a Missouri woman, the first movie star she had ever seen, when Anna Lee had taken her to the Elmwood Theater to see Kitty Foyle:
GIVE THEM HELL, KID—GINGER ROGERS
Women started to listen and read what Betty Raye had to say about how if elected she would not only continue her late husband’s policies but implement new ones of her own, of interest to them. She promised to introduce state laws forcing state monies to be spent on facilities for women and girls as well as the males. She talked about the inequities of the women’s salaries compared with the men’s, subjects that they had never heard another candidate speak about, and they liked what they heard. When Ada Goodnight and her sister Bess, who were now traveling around Arizona in their Airstream trailer, read that she was running all by herself and was being attacked, they turned around and headed home to help. Ada knew about the plight of women in a male-dominated world. In 1945, when the male soldiers started coming back home from Europe, she and all the other women pilots that had served as WASPs during the war were unceremoniously told to go home and never received a dime or even thanks from the government. When a WASP friend of hers had been killed flying a mission, the army had refused to pay to send the body back to the family. Ada was more than ready for a fight. When she got back she organized all her lady-pilot pals and they all went up in their counties all over the state and dropped thousands of leaflets, urging women to vote for Betty Raye. Bess organized the entire state’s ladies’ bowling-league teams to get out and roll for Betty Raye. Pretty soon the ladies’ auxiliaries of the Elks, the Moose, and the Lions and members of the Eastern Star got behind her. The wives of the Allis-Chalmers tractor company took out a full-page ad in the farmers’ weekly that went all over the state.
The women of Elmwood Springs jumped in and did their share. Aunt