The Missouri Historical Society’s oral historian for the Richard A. Gephardt Project, Gwen Moore, interviewed Harriett Woods, former University City councilwoman, former state senator, former lieutenant governor, and two-time president of the Women’s Political Caucus, on July 13, 2006. Woods died seven months later, on February 8, 2007. This interview has been edited for length.

Harriett Woods was elected lieutenant governor of Missouri in 1984. Photograph, 1986. Photograph courtesy of the Missouri State Archives.

Missouri Historical Society: I’m going to start right off by asking you about [Richard A.] Gephardt. Your careers have intersected over the years many times—and you might have started off a little ahead of him, but about the same time—do you recall when you first met Richard Gephardt?

Harriett Woods: We were both reformers but in somewhat different ways. He was of course one of the Young Turks in the City who really did bring about some change but also emerged as leaders up the line. So I thought of him always as someone who was for better government—probably more for reforming the structure of government—and that was in the City of St. Louis. I was out of course in the suburbs and really became involved in government as someone who wanted to bring about social change. University City was really a leader in deciding that everyone should be able to live wherever they could afford to live, and even today the race issue is just a calamity for this area because people still aren’t often comfortable with some of these issues. Well, believe me, when I got into local government almost accidentally in the ’60s, late ’60s, it was a real controversy whether government would be an advocate for opening up to people of color moving out in this, particularly African Americans, moving beyond the city boundaries. And so I was very focused on bringing, making this country live up to its principles. I’m not saying that Dick wasn’t, but he was more caught up in the mechanics of changing leadership, changing the rules, and I think that remained with him. I had come out of journalism. I was very comfortable with the media and I think that was a benefit to me. And also as a pioneering woman running for public office, I think the media was interested in me. I think Dick originally benefited from being a Young Turk but, as probably we’ll discuss later, I think later on the media was not very kind to him . . . as an insider who protected the establishment. So we really had quite, as we evolved, we went in different directions. But our lives intersected at very crucial points. For example, in his presidential race, when I became a national co-chair for his campaign in ’88, and then struggling with where we are now over issues that I think eventually kind of defeated him in his efforts to become president.

MHS: Let me ask you about when you became national co-chair. I know before that, let’s say in ’86 when you were running for senator, it was a time you were challenging Christopher Bond, is that correct?

HW: Yeah. My second time.

MHS: The second time. And it was rumored that Gephardt was considering it too.

HW: That’s true. Summarizing my political career, my first race was one that really changed this country. That was in ’82 when I ran against an incumbent Republican who was, you know, Jack Danforth, and [I] was seen to have very little chance. I had been in the state senate for six years. As I indicated, I was involved in causes and in trying to improve the lives of people. So I had developed a certain support system around the lives of the elderly, advocating for women and minorities, but also for working people. And this is important in looking at the comparative careers of Dick and myself and how we worked together and how we sometimes went different paths. In ’82, when I ran for the United States Senate, there was double-digit unemployment in this country.

Harriett Woods in discussion with colleagues in 1987. Photograph courtesy of the Missouri State Archives.

I don’t think people understand. . . . Someone’s got to talk about our national policies. It was when we were attacking the Reagan trickle-down economics but we were saying we have to do something for the people who are being left out.... I said, “Somebody has to debate these issues.” I was midterm in my second term as a state senator and filed for office after thinking everyone would support me, and as you probably know from reading my book, uh-uh. The establishment at that time said, “A woman cannot win this race; she can’t raise the money.” There had never been a Democratic woman elected to the United States Senate in her own right. There were all these clichés and stereotypes. And of course, I finally decided if I couldn’t run having been a state senator, city council member, television producer, on and on, what woman was ever going to run? So I ran. Narrowly lost that race, but [it] really was important that I ran. A lot of people got involved in that race: my campaign supporters, who never thought they would, that anyone that they could really care about would run. A lot of people gave money, sometimes ten dollars, but it changed the cliché about women not being able to raise money. And I think as much as anything else a lot of them themselves later became candidates, women and minorities, because they said, hey, I lost by very little, by 27,000 votes statewide. So then I went back to the Senate and then was elected lieutenant governor, and it's important for young people to understand you can lose but you can still win. I mean, I had created an identity statewide and was able to be elected statewide for lieutenant governor, and [to] work on some very important issues like homelessness. . . .

	Justice Higgins addresses a joint session of the Missouri legislature in 1987. Photograph courtesy of the Missouri State Archives.

MHS: I should point out you were the first woman to win statewide.

HW: Yes, I was the first woman elected statewide. I’m sort of glad that we’re getting beyond that, but the fact is that for those of us who were part of the revolution, so to speak, yes, it’s still worth mentioning. So we get to ’86, and I really had not planned to run for United States Senate then because it again was an off-year. And when I say off-year, I mean the best time to run in the state of Missouri anyway, as a Democrat, is when it’s a presidential year because that’s when the most people turn out; particularly people who are working people or for various reasons may not be in the habit always of voting, I’m sorry to say. So I didn’t really want to run then, but Tom Eagleton announced that he was not going to run again. And so I had this difficult decision of letting someone else establish themselves as a senator or running, and of course I ran. Now, you raise the issue of, well, there was talk that Dick Gephardt wanted to run. I think maybe he might have wanted to. And so we got into this little dance where we said, well, I had done all this groundbreaking, running in ’82, and if I wanted to run, I really ought to have, I don’t know why, but I ought to have it. And what we need to do is to sort of block them. I mean, that’s politics. And so get out ahead of them, get support, get the money, and then make it more difficult for him in effect to run against me. I don’t know whether that was in his mind or not, but he didn’t run. I mean, he had other things that he was already thinking about running for—president, speaker, all those things. But yes, that’s that story. And I ran.

MHS: Did you ever talk to him about his, whether or not he was going to run?

HW: I’m sure we did. I think he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t confident that he was going to run. I mean, he was not sure that he was going to run and so he was still deciding at the time I was deciding, and I decided I was going to run. Oh, but we always were friendly. There was never any bad feeling between us, and, particularly, as I mentioned, we worked together very strongly on the tax reform issue when he was in Congress and I was in the legislature.

Harriett Woods and Richard Gephardt at a meeting of the Democratic Leadership Council. n.d. Photograph courtesy of Richard A. Gephardt Papers.

MHS: In doing research, one of the things that I noticed is that you and Gephardt were at the same time considered sort of rising stars in the [Democratic] Party.

HW: In different ways, yes.

MHS: In different ways, but I got the impression, and I think it’s probably a very strong impression, that you were often criticized by your own party for being too liberal.

HW: Oh, sure. Well, I think one of the losing battles progressive liberals have fought is they say now, framing, which in other words, conservative is considered a good, safe, sound word in Missouri. But liberal, which after all is just a dictionary opposite. In other words, conservative is someone who doesn’t want to change the way things are. Liberals want, are open to new ideas. That’s my interpretation. But somehow we allowed opponents to say liberals are people who want to use government to take away our money as taxes, our rights, or the abortion issue, you know, and all these kinds of things. We didn’t do a very good job of that, and I think one of the reasons is that we didn’t really understand what was happening in this country coming out of the great Roosevelt era and Social Security and all that, where we thought those changes, which were liberal, were things that people wanted. And obviously the Democratic Party is made up of interest groups who benefited: blacks, women, working people. But there are certain areas of this country, such as Missouri, where there is resistance to change. And people who want change therefore are seen not as good, but as threats. So the word liberal became extreme. And I can remember running for United States Senate the second time, particularly, and having reporters . . . the first question was always about what’s it like running as a woman. And the second one was sort of, are you a liberal? And I have to admit there was, there were times I said, “I’m a progressive.” I don’t know why that’s supposed to be better, but more acceptable. So yes, absolutely. I’ve never changed, though, my positions in order. . . .

MHS: But am I correct in thinking that even Democratic Party leaders were a little skittish about your positions?

HW: Oh yeah, not even skittish, they were . . . although I want to say something to you. I think it was more about power and the, my positions became a useful target. Let me give you an example. I was, I’ve told you that in 1982 I ran for the United States Senate and I was forthright and had been even running for city council and state senator. I always believed in the things that I believe in and will not change my position, I’ll tell the voters, whether it’s being against the death penalty, being for women’s right to choose, or . . . People will know it. They don’t want to vote for me, they don’t have to. There are a lot of other things where I will listen to people, whether it’s how the school fund money should be divided. . . . I’ll listen and change. Hopefully grow and adjust myself. So I had always had that. I mean, it wasn’t I suddenly sprung up with liberal positions. I came out of an area that accepted and supported my views. And then I went to the state senate and became an advocate for the elderly, which was an issue which didn’t seem . . . I guess it’s a liberal issue but people didn’t think of it that way. The reform of nursing homes, starting the first protective services for people living outside nursing homes, help for people in the home, I mean these were things that transformed the lives of the elderly, I’m proud to say. But I didn’t think of them as liberal. But if you’re opposed to that person or you want that position instead of them, you’re going to say, “They spend tax money. They are liberal.” And so as my career developed I had a big constituency, but there were folks who saw me as a competitor. I mean, it wasn’t, it really wasn’t so much that I was a liberal as it was easy to target me for that.

MHS: You had proved that you could get votes statewide. Like you mentioned, you were the only Democrat to win statewide office.

HW: I know it. Yeah.

MHS: But I still got the impression that they thought Gephardt might have been a safer choice.

HW: I think there’s always that speculation. Well, a safer choice? Well, I got elected. I think it was, he probably, if I could get elected, probably he could have too. I don’t know. Because there were strong people running for the other statewide offices. The speaker of the house, but the speaker of the house, Ken Rothman, was from St. Louis and had some of the same profile as Dick did in the eyes of rural and Kansas City people. You understand what I’m saying? We’re a weird state, or southeast Missouri or northwest. So I remember, there’s a funny story, I may have put it in the book, but when I first ran for U.S. Senate I’d never, I didn’t, hadn’t run statewide. I didn’t know any of these areas except maybe Kansas City. So I was down in McDonald County, . . . almost out of Oklahoma or something. And they were having a speak-out as they often did; sort of like a fish-fry speak-out. And you stood up, and in this case I think it was like a plank or something. Anyway, and I gave my speech to be United States senator and this area had never voted for Democrats. And then I got down and I was walking away and this young girl, student I guess, said you know, “Senator Woods”—I was a state senator then—“can I talk to you and ask you a question?” And I was in a big hurry but I stopped and talked to her for a few minutes and answered a question. I don’t even remember what it was. I won that area. And people said, “How could you have won it?” And the people in the area said, ”If she’s going to stop and talk to a child, she’s going to stop and listen to us.” You know, we have a lot in common, rural and urban. And if you don’t let them frame you as someone who’s extreme but as someone . . . and I always presented myself as a person of principle. And I’ll stand up for my principles, but you know then that I’ll stand up for you. I was not elected U.S. senator so I . . . but in effect, I was running against an incumbent and it was pretty tough.

	Gephardt presidental announcement, 1987. Photograph courtesy of Richard A. Gephardt Papers. Jim Stepanik for Andra Photographics, Inc., St. Louis, Missouri.

MHS: So how did you become national co-chair of Gephardt’s presidential campaign?

HW: Okay, and that is important—my connections with Dick when he became a national figure. Now first of all, I had always supported him in his, we worked together on taxes. We worked together on a lot of things. It was not a change. I think that I had contacted him worried about the women’s vote, which is extremely important in the Democratic Party in the national race just as minorities are. I mean, there are people who traditionally vote, you want to get a turnout from, you want them to be enthusiastic. And as I had talked to various people and I was active in the national Women’s Political Caucus, they were saying, “Well we won’t support . . . we don’t want Dick Gephardt because he’s pro-life.” And what I knew about Dick is that he was capable of listening and growing, and so when I talked to him, I said, “I’m not asking you to flip-flop” (which later became an accusation) “but to understand that a good many people you represent really feel strongly and want the ability to have some flexibility on this issue. We’re not asking you to take the complete position, but to acknowledge that a constitutional amendment” (which was a big issue then at that time to reverse Roe v. Wade, which was of course a Supreme Court decision) “is unfair and would really alienate your voters.” So they . . . asked me, they wanted me to be a spokesperson with women’s groups. And naming me a national co-chair was, I suppose, not a real, I mean, I was not sitting in on all their decisions, that’s a joke. But it gave me at least a kind of a title that where when I went to these groups, I could say, “You know my position. You know [where] I stood on this issue. And the fact [is] that he’s asked me to do this and that I’m telling you what his position is. It’s not as strong as mine but you don’t have to fear that he is going to use his position to take away, to criminalize abortion.”

MHS: Did you help shape his policies?

HW: No, well, except in talking to him. I mean I was not part of a policy team. In fact, that was of course one of the difficulties. As I said, Joanne Symons and Donna Brazile and I would all talk. We weren’t really part of the policy team. . . . That race I think Dick Gephardt would have been a great candidate, a great president. He was a great candidate.

MHS: What happened after Iowa? I mean, he did win in Iowa in ’88.

HW: He won in Iowa. . . . Up until the night of the election of Super Tuesday I think there was real hope that he would get enough states to be in position to win, to be the nominee. But it didn’t happen. . . . And I remember being at the headquarters and Dick was sitting all alone. I mean, he wanted to be alone. And finally they said I could go in and talk to him. Terrible. I just said, “You did a great job and you’re young.” But when that happens it’s hard. And so many of us, I had gone to Florida with his mother to get votes in that area. I mean, he did his all and he reached out to lots of constituencies, but it’s not the parliamentary system.

MHS: You went to Iowa in 2004?

HW: Oh, yes. Because he was our, he was the [candidate], it was a different situation though. I didn’t go . . . in ’88, I went there and helped to organize it. I spoke to all these groups early on. I stayed there. In ’04, we went up at the very end for targeted groups. I mean, we said, “Hey, here’s the choice and Dick Gephardt would be a good president.” We were disappointed in his position, but you see, there weren’t, I want to tell you, except for Howard [Dean], it wasn’t as if everyone else was running around saying let’s change the war policy. So it was more a question of evaluating. And so yes, a whole group of [who] you might call the political women went up and campaigned in the last, just the last week.

MHS: Did you get a sense of where that was going to go?

HW: Oh, yeah, it was a real problem because here’s what happened. Labor switched on him. See that’s what made me so mad. I mean, he, we don’t have time to talk about all those things, labor made the mistake on the international trade issue. There are certain things that I really do know a lot about, I think I’m pretty shrewd on, and that is if labor was going to, this was a little earlier, but if they were going to spend all their marbles on something, it should have been on reversing Taft-Hartley so that they could not be fired and replaced on the job. Ever since then, they’ve had no power. I mean, if your employer can fire you and you don’t have any recourse, that’s what’s killed labor unions. But instead of that, they used all their strength, all their political muscle on of course the trade issue, which you can’t stop what’s going to happen in international trade. . . . But anyway, no, I felt I supported him but I didn’t do as much as I could have because I really strongly disagreed on his policy on the war.

MHS:  So what was the difference between, I might be asking a little bit too much, the difference between ’88 and 2004?

HW: The world had changed.

MHS: The world had changed.

HW: And there were different, I think as you know, the technology had changed, we had people going on Internet and blogs and raising money and creating candidacies. . . . And although I think the Gephardt campaign did some of that, he wasn’t that type of candidate. He was a candidate who was running on his ability to bring people together. He was experienced, he was an insider, and probably the best one, and he was somebody who proposed policies to improve the structure of government: taxes, you know, the elderly, labor, etc. But there was something going on in the country which some of us, I mean I certainly wasn’t the most, I wasn’t in the leadership on that, but we could sense it. And that is people were, felt they were being left out of decisions. They wanted to be heard. And they were going, and the Democratic Party was really ineffectual in terms of its structure. We could go on about that, but the fact is that whatever effective precinct work was done in 2004 was done by MoveOn.org and ACT and all these groups that were organized around Internet and people wanting to be heard. It was what when I was young we did through the Democratic Party for Stevenson and McCarthy because there was an existing structure in the Democratic Party to capture, you might say. It’s not there. So the world did change and I think it changed in a way that disadvantaged a candidate like Dick Gephardt. It’s not that he wouldn’t have been a good president. He would, I mean he would have been a great president. I think people sometimes expect too much of a president, someone who can represent all the interests of the party and as they say, can travel this country from one motel to another. I mean, we have a crazy system. And he had done it and I think he would have been a good president. But I think the world had changed.

MHS: We’re very close to the end. I just wanted to give you a chance if you wanted to add anything.

	A button from Gephardt’s 1988 presidential campaign compared the candidate to former president and Missourian Harry Truman. Courtesy of the Richard A. Gephardt papers.

HW: I think when you look now at who people will remember and will think of as, people who have been outstanding, certainly Dick Gephardt will. He had two presidential races, he was speaker, I mean, majority leader. And I would just say that that’s pretty good. A good person, great organization, and who else are you going to remember? I mean, as I say, Harry Truman? So I do think that I feel good about having tried to move him to the last step, which was president of the United States without any expectation of any of us would be going with him. But at the same time, it’s important to have different voices.

MHS: If he had been president, do you think he would have been on par with a Harry Truman?

HW: Oh, I think he would have been a different kind of president but a very good one, because he would have known how to work with Congress and solve problems, getting people to vote to solve the major problems that we have. And more than anything else, not leaving people out. That’s what his interest was in, the tax issue, and in for working people. We’re the worse for it that he isn’t there.

MHS: I want to thank you, Governor Woods. I hope that we can do this again because I’d like to talk about your career.

HW: Well, I must say there’s a whole other story, which is about [how] women are still under-represented.

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