![]() ![]() Reelected in 1938 (without Long’s help), she served in the Senate until 1945.ĭespite this success, Caraway remained a bit of a curiosity in the Senate. The highlight of her 1932 campaign came in August, when the controversial Huey Long joined Caraway for a week-long road trip nicknamed the “Hattie and Huey Tour.” Storming through Arkansas with his big sound trucks, Long bellowed: “We're here to pull a lot of pot-bellied politicians off a little woman's neck.” Giving her own stump speeches alongside the Louisiana Kingfish, Caraway won the election with double the vote of her nearest rival. What they failed to consider, however, was the tenaciousness of the “little lady from Arkansas” and the persuasive skills of Louisiana senator Huey Long. “I pitched a coin and heads came three times,” she noted in her diary, adding, “I really want to try out my own theory of a woman running for office.” Her male competitors joked that she would be lucky to attract 1 percent of the vote. On May 9, 1932, Caraway surprised just about everyone and declared her candidacy. Party leaders assumed the widow had no intention of running for a full term, but they were wrong. Hattie Caraway entered the Senate in November 1931, by appointment, following the death of her husband, Senator Thad Caraway. By 1943 Caraway had grown accustomed to breaking the Senate's gender barriers. “Nothing came up but oh, the autographs I signed.” Other precedents followed-the first woman to chair a committee in 1933, and the first woman to stand in for the floor leader in 1940. In 1932 she briefly filled in for Vice President Charles Curtis, but there was no official recognition of the event. The first woman elected to the Senate, Caraway had presided once before. In the absence of the vice president and the president pro tempore, the duties of the chair were assigned to Arkansas senator Hattie Caraway. On October 19, 1943, for the first time, a woman formally took up the gavel as the Senate's presiding officer.
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