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Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU All USU Press Publications USU Press 2007 Madame Chair Jean Miles Westwood Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs Part of the American Politics Commons Recommended Citation Westwood, J. (2007). Madame chair: The political autobiography of an unintentional pioneer. Logan: Utah State University Press. This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the USU Press at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All USU Press Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Madame Chair Special Collections Dept., J. Willard Marriott University of Utah Library, Chase LTD. photo, Washington, D.C. Offi cial photo of Jean Westwood after her appointment as chair of the Democratic National Committee in 1972. Madame Chair The Political Autobiography of an Unintentional Pioneer Jean Miles Westwood Edited by Linda Sillitoe With a Foreword by Floyd A. O’Neil Utah State University Press Logan, Utah Copyright ©2007 Utah State University Press All rights reserved Utah State University Press Logan, Utah 84322-7200 Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on recycled, acid-free paper ISBN: 978-0-87421-661-5 (cloth) ISBN: 978-0-87421-666-0 (e-book) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Westwood, Jean. Madame chair : the political autobiography of an unintentional pioneer / Jean Miles Westwood. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-87421-661-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Westwood, Jean. 2. Women political consultants--United States--Biography. 3. Political consultants--United States--Biography. 4. Democratic Party (U.S.)- -Biography. 5. United States--Politics and government--20th century. 6. Presidents--United States--Election--1972. 7. Utah--Politics and government-- 20th century. I. Title. E840.8.W475A3 2007 324.7’0973--dc22 [B] 2007016750 Contents Foreword Floyd A. O’Neil vi Prologue 1 1. McGovern Calls 5 2. Political Beginnings 30 3. Party Politics—and Parties 41 4. Preparing for the 1968 Convention 55 5. The 1968 Campaign in Utah 67 6. Beginnings of Reform 77 7. Implementing Reform 91 8. Call for the 1972 Convention 104 9. Convention by Committee 114 10. The Nominee—and a New Chair 130 11. The Hatchet and the Race 143 12. To Chair or Not 157 13. Conceiving a Charter 172 14. The Sanford Campaign 183 15. Rounding Out a Career 197 Epilogue 215 Index 217 Foreword Floyd A. O’Neil Jean Miles Westwood was one of the most unusual persons I have known. She was born in Price, Carbon County, Utah; her mother from a family called Potter, one of the pioneer families in the region, and her father, also of old Mormon stock, an employee of the U.S. Post Offi ce. She went through Carbon High School, but did not get very far with her college plans when other things, including marriage, intervened. She was young during the Depression and World War II, and that changed her life. Growing up in Carbon County, Utah, a coal mining region that is one of the most politically liberal areas in the western United States, she, too, was of that political persuasion. She saw the iniq- uities in society and whenever she could moved to try and overcome those things that were in her mind unfair. Cursed with a body that had numerous health problems, she in her youth experienced more medical crises than most people experience in their entire lives, and they dogged her as she aged. She married a unique man, Richard Westwood. He was from Moab, Utah, and remembered his unusual upbringing in the little river town very well, later writing a memoir of his childhood and two other books on early Colorado River runners. Dick and Jean were a mixed couple in terms of religion—she Mormon; he a non-Mormon in Utah. He joined that church before they married at her parents’ request. The young couple, Dick Westwood and Jean Miles, moved from Carbon County to San Diego and married near the onset of World War II. When they returned to Utah, they went into the business of raising mink in West Jordan. A mink coat was a symbol of success in the United States in the years from World War II until the 1970s. The Westwoods were very successful not only in the farming and selling of mink but also in breed- ing selective mutations for distinctive colors that sold at high prices. It was in West Jordan, Utah, that Jean Westwood became active in politics—fi rst in the schools, but moving from them into the Democratic Party. Jean insisted that many things in our lives could be improved, vi Foreword vii and all who lived in Salt Lake County found themselves with a fellow citizen who asked many questions, on a variety of topics, and who was an active, deliberate agent of change. She rose rapidly through the Democratic Party and gained a national rep- utation. Her husband supported her without stint in this remarkable career, as she rose from Utah to the national stage, to become the fi rst woman ever to chair the Democratic National Committee. Succeeding Larry O’Brien as chair, she joined him in suing Nixon’s reelection campaign over the offi ces burgled in the Watergate building in Washington, D.C., in 1972. Jean Westwood kept good records of what had happened to her. In 1972 she had become a key partner in the effort to elect George McGovern president of the United States. In spite of being told by many people not to do it, Jean was determined to be a part of that campaign. By helping lead it, gaining experience and a wide network of contacts in and out of Washington, D.C., and then being elected the fi rst woman to head the national Democratic Party, or any major national political party, Jean Westwood became a powerful fi gure. Her autobiography was a notable accomplishment completed late in her life. I feel close to this work because at my suggestion, Gregory Thompson and I started doing oral interviews with Jean Westwood in 1987. Dr. Thompson secured funding through the Special Collections Department of the University of Utah’s Marriott Library. I am still astounded that we did not fi nish that amazing set of interviews until we had enjoyed forty hours of conversation. Gregory Thompson and I are both of the opinion that it is one of the most remarkable oral his- tories that we have completed, and that includes well over a thousand individual oral histories. This outstanding woman was most unusual for her times. Her work building roles for women in politics was a very practical way for her to help advance feminism. More involvement of women in powerful political positions gave women as a whole more power and a greater voice in national decisions. She accomplished this while maintaining the rest of her life as a wife, a mother, and a businesswoman in a most competitive arena. Her book is the history of one pioneer woman who succeeded in the political world by overcoming the limits of gender politics. She did so out of a deep belief in the ethical responsibilities of government. She will be a lasting fi gure in the histories of twentieth-century Utah and the United States. Jean Miles Westwood died in 1997. Special Collections Dept., J. Willard Marriott University of Utah Library, Photo by Dev O’Neill, Democratic National Congressional Committee Jean Westwood conducting an August 1972 Democratic National Committee meeting. Rep. James O’Hara, parliamentarian, is to her left. PROLOGUE One day in July 1972, in Miami, Florida, I became a national symbol— the fi rst woman in United States history to be elected to lead a national political party, and at a crucially important time. As I assumed offi ce, questions abounded regarding the burglary of the suite of the Democratic National Committee (DNC ) in the Watergate Offi ce Building. The burglars proved most unusual, with suit pockets stuffed with cash. They carried suffi cient equipment to photograph DNC fi les and to place surveillance devices. No one seemed to know why. Even more diffi cult that summer was our wrenching decision to dump the running mate of our new presidential nominee, Senator George McGovern, due to Senator Thomas Eagleton’s history of clinical depres- sion. The convention had adjourned before we recognized this quagmire, and we did not even know how to get another candidate on the ticket. Before I ever had the chance to bang a gavel, I appeared on national tele- vision bearing a political hatchet. My election as chair of the DNC was one of many “fi rsts” achieved by women during the 1970s’ liberation movement. Throughout those stormy, earnest years of redefi nition we looked to politics as the means for change in scores of practical and idealistic ways. I was probably the fi rst visible party worker to endorse McGovern, and I worked relent- lessly for his nomination. Now, my offi ce would move from West Jordan, Utah, to Washington, D.C. The Republican convention followed ours, a quasi-coronation for President Richard M. Nixon. We had no idea, as we scrambled to pay the party’s debts and fi nance campaigns, that the Republicans were caching “slush funds” in the White House and at the Committee to Reelect the President (CRP). As we DNC offi cers and campaign leaders set up offi ces a few blocks apart—and soon discovered another listening device—we had only a curious inkling that Nixon and his key men had a lot to hide.