ew Hampshire has and Connecticut had a female governor, Maine has had three female US senators in the last 50 years, and Massachusetts is supposedly no less receptive to new ideas than its neighboring states, but women in top offices? Sorry.
Only three women in Congress ever from Massachusetts? And only three women in statewide constitutional office? Since John Smith pow-wowed with Pocahontas? That's it?
''It is an embarrassment that such a high-profile state as Massachusetts holds such a poor record,'' says Betty Taymor. For any woman who aspires to win - notice I did not say ''seek'' - a top-rank public office here as governor or US senator, Taymor's new book, ''Running against the Wind: The Struggle of Women in Massachusetts Politics,'' is both a road map and a chronicle of previous failures.
Why this long history to overcome? Are alpha male pols so insecure? Do the money people harbor antifeminist biases? Is the Roman Catholic Church involved somehow? Were the Kennedy women bad role models? Do Italians and Greeks prefer male officeholders? Maybe, but things are changing, though not fast enough, Taymor asserts in her book.
Taymor, a longtime Democrat and Newton political activist who founded the Program for Women in Political and Governmental Careers, has written a book that is part personal memoir, part political history of the past 50 years of Bay State politics, part academic excavation of gender issues, and partly a polemic on behalf of more women running for every office. In it she explains why the gender gap (women voting differently from men) is not sufficient to elect women here. ''In major races in 1998, Marjorie Claprood, Susan Tracy, Dorothy Kelly Gay, who ran for lieutenant governor, Patricia McGovern [governor] and Lois Pines [attorney general] all lost in the primaries. I do not believe that they lost principally because of gender bias, but for a large variety of other reasons.''
In the 8th Congressional race, Emily's List, the feminist group that shunts campaign money to female candidates, found itself forced to choose between Claprood and Tracy. Instead, it took a pass and sent money to neither. Two men who had built mayoral machines, Mike Capuano of Somerville and Ray Flynn of Boston, finished one-two, while Claprood ran fifth and Tracy eighth. Ed Brooke, a black Republican, won a US Senate seat; Greeks like Michael Dukakis and Paul Tsongas won big too; Italian-Americans have elected three governors (Foster Furcolo, John A. Volpe, and Paul Cellucci) and spawned the mayors of the state's three largest cities.
Irish dominance? Hah! The last time an Irish-American made the finals of a governor's race here was five elections back. Bottom line? There are many ways to get one of your own elected; women just have to find one. The present state of affairs turns up:
Lieutenant Governor Jane Swift, little-known when she was picked by Cellucci as his running mate; she bore a child during the campaign, and since then has earned the derisive nickname ''Not Too Swift'' for a series of missteps and miscalculations that, while none of them are too weighty in their own right, collectively suggest she is far from ready to be a prime-time political player on Beacon Hill.
Shannon O'Brien, elected state treasurer on her second try, an affable, one-of-the-boys style campaigner, daughter of a veteran Western Massachusetts governor's councilor, Ed O'Brien, and wife of former state Representative Emmet Hayes. With Shannon, it's all in the family. Her skills are still apparent, but a stinkbomb of a scandal left on her doorstep by her predecessor, Joe Malone, hobbled most of the initiatives O'Brien based her campaign upon.
Martha Coakley, elected district attorney in Middlesex County, where 25 percent of the state's voters live. An able prosecutor who's arguably the best TV persona in the state, she'd be a natural for attorney general, if only her old boss, Tom Reilly, were not cemented there.
There are plenty of female legislators, but it's hard to be a legislator and get elected to executive office. McGovern and Pines both took votes that made easy pickings for male rivals in campaign ads. Nor is money a surefire victory ticket. Taymor quotes Lois Pines: ''Isn't it terrible, Betty, that a well-funded woman candidate cannot win a top post in Massachusetts politics in 1998?'' Taymor notes that congressional candidates Chris Gabrielli and John O'Connor dumped nearly $9 million between them and got creamed.
And, yes, there are women who get ahead in the political game and then refuse to lift their sisters. Taymor does not name the Dukakis-era female officeholder who stiffed Taymor's effort to help five minority women get some aid to finish up at Boston College, where Taymor ran the Women in Political and Governmental Careers program before moving it to the University of Massachusetts at Boston and the McCormack Institute. Taymor says her associate, Elizabeth Sherman, coined this description: '' Women who went up the ladder and then cut the rope.''
What will it take to have a woman governor or US senator? Money, luck, experience, toughness. But above all, timing. McGovern could have had the nomination for lieutenant governor, a safer step for her. Or Pines could have dropped out of the lieutenant governor's race, rather than let John Kerry benefit because Pines and Evelyn Murphy split the women's vote in '82. Tracy could have given Claprood a clearer shot. Timing is all.
There are women who now control vast personal wealth; that'll make fund-raising easier. The key to winning is appealing across traditional bloc lines. To me, Coakley has the most potential that way; she can do law-and-order, she can do softer side, she can do both great on TV. Her timing? We'll see. I assume someone already gave Martha a copy of the Taymor book.
Afterthought: There's a vintage James Michael Curley yarn in ''Running against the Wind.'' The year is 1955, and he's lecturing Taymor's Newton Democratic City Committee on the pitfalls of an all-Irish state ticket. The Italians have the most children these days, Curley said with a wink. ''The Irish only have two or three kids now, and the WASPS - they only have dogs.'' He was prescient: Furcolo won in '56.
David Nyhan is a Globe columnist.
