Ruth McCormick (née Hanna, also known as Ruth Hanna McCormick Simms; March 27, 1880 – December 31, 1944), was an American politician, activist, and publisher. She served one term in the United States House of Representatives, winning an at-large seat in Illinois in 1928. She gave up the chance to run for re-election to seek a United States Senate seat from Illinois. She defeated the incumbent, Senator Charles S. Deneen, in the Republican primary, becoming the first female Senate candidate for a major party. McCormick lost the general election. A decade later, she became the first woman to manage a presidential campaign, although her candidate, Thomas E. Dewey, failed to capture his party's nomination.
Politics were a part of McCormick's life from an early age. She was the daughter of Mark Hanna, a Senator and politician who was instrumental in the election of President William McKinley. McCormick learned politics by watching her father, and put those lessons to use fighting for causes such as women's suffrage and improved working conditions for women. McCormick was instrumental in passing a partial suffrage law in Illinois in 1913, allowing women to vote in municipal and Presidential elections. She also married two politicians, Senator Medill McCormick and, after Senator McCormick's death, Congressman Albert Gallatin Simms. McCormick had the fame, the background and the determination to build a career on the new opportunities for women in high level politics. As a spokesperson for the suffrage and for the Republican party, she made political activism attractive for partisan women.
McCormick's endeavors were not limited to politics. Throughout her life, she maintained an interest in agriculture. She owned and operated ranches in Illinois, New Mexico, and Colorado. She also owned several newspapers, founding the Rockford Consolidated Newspapers in Rockford, Illinois.
Early life and family
Ruth Hanna was born on March 27, 1880, in Cleveland, Ohio. She was the third child of businessman and Republican politician Mark Hanna and Charlotte Augusta Hanna (née Rhodes). Her mother descended from a wealthy Vermont coal and iron family. She attended Hathaway Brown School in Cleveland, The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York, and the Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut. In 1896, Hanna traveled the country with her father, who was campaigning for then-presidential candidate McKinley while also running his own campaign for the United States Senate.
After high school, Hanna went to Washington, D.C., to work as a secretary for her father who was serving as United States Senator from Ohio. Although her family was wealthy, Hanna did not limit her friends based on her social station. They were married on June 10, 1903, with President Roosevelt attending the wedding. In spite of their personal wealth, the couple lived at the University of Chicago Settlement, which introduced McCormick to many working women and helped her to understand the problems they faced. She was also an active member of the Women's City Club of Chicago, a group that sought to convince lawmakers to pass legislation to help women, but found women's concerns were being pushed aside because they were not voters. She had long supported Progressive Party leader Theodore Roosevelt and found the switch to be consistent with the principles of her father, even though he had been a staunch Republican.
Suffrage
left|thumb|Ruth Hanna McCormick, 1914
McCormick worked closely with Grace Wilbur Trout to enact partial equal suffrage legislation in Illinois, Illinois had frequently passed such legislation through one house of the legislature before it ultimately stalled.
thumb|Your Girl and Mine film ad, 1914
McCormick remained an active worker for national suffrage until the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified. She took over leadership from Alice Paul, who went on to form the Congressional Union as a separate national suffrage organization. From that headquarters, she was tasked with getting more pro-suffrage candidates elected to state level offices. The film never circulated broadly, despite critical praise from contemporary film reviewers, because the distribution agreement between NAWSA and the World Film Corporation fell apart shortly after the premiere in 1914 and the film was confined to private screenings.
Return to Republican Party politics
left|thumb|293x293px|Ruth Hanna McCormick, Chairman, Republican Women's National Executive Committee at the Republican National Conference, May 22–23, 1919 in Washington, D. C.
Medill served one term in the United States House of Representatives before being elected to the United States Senate from Illinois in 1918. McCormick was highly involved in her husband's political career, and he often credited her for his success. In 1918, McCormick served as the chairman of the first woman's executive committee of the RNC. As chair, she devised a plan to get women to become active members of the Republican Party across the country. The farm at Byron, Illinois, served as a model dairy, and it remained open as other similar farms closed for being unprofitable. McCormick and her children spent time at the farm during the summer months. Although not publicized as such at the time, his death was considered a suicide. One of the factors leading to his suicide was his loss in the 1924 election. and as a member of the event's Board of Directors. The goal of the event was to demonstrate the progress of women.<!-- In November 1928, McCormick won first place in the general election with 1,711,651 votes, elected along with the incumbent. Her vote total was a larger vote share than any other Republican on the ticket in Illinois, besides presidential nominee Herbert Hoover, McCormick was one of eight women elected to serve in the Seventy-first Congress, and one of three women elected for the first time. By the time she entered Congress, McCormick had built a reputation as an astute politician for her years of working with her husband, and her ability to navigate the factions of Illinois politics.
Once in Congress, McCormick was appointed to the House Committee on Naval Affairs. She was the first woman to serve on the influential committee. Although she was not placed on the Agriculture Committee, despite her knowledge of farming, she pushed legislation to relieve farm overproduction. By October, McCormick had returned to Illinois, visiting the state's various counties to rally support while Deneen was stuck in Washington, D.C., on Senate business. As an Illinois farm owner, McCormick drew support from farmers in the state, particularly those down-state.
For the general election, McCormick was up against Democratic nominee former Senator J. Hamilton Lewis. The high cost of McCormick's primary campaign also became a point for attack in the general election, with Lewis accusing McCormick of trying to buy the election. McCormick refused to make her gender an issue, calling gender differences a personality issue and insisting political party mattered more in the general election. McCormick lost the election, 64% to 31%.
Later life
In 1930, McCormick bought all three newspapers in Rockford, Illinois. She then formed Rockford Consolidated Newspapers as the publisher of the Rockford Register-Republic and the Rockford Morning Star. Her two youngest children attended school there while Katrina, the oldest, was enrolled in Columbia University. McCormick hired John Gaw Meem to add to the existing ranch house on the property, Together, Simms and McCormick were one of the richest couples in New Mexico, and they used their fortune for several philanthropic endeavors. They founded Sandia School in 1932 and the Manzano Day School in 1938. In 1937, she sold her dairy farm in Illinois and purchased a 250,000–acre cattle and sheep ranch in Colorado. His body was found in the mountains after several days of searching. Not long after the loss, McCormick fractured her hip, limiting her activities.
Eight years after leaving office, McCormick announced her return to politics ahead of the 1940 presidential election. She once again threw herself into politics, co-managing Thomas Dewey's 1940 presidential campaign, becoming the first woman to take on such a role in a presidential campaign. While recovering from her fracture, McCormick had traveled to New York, where she convinced her cousin, New York Daily News editor Joseph Medill Patterson, to allow her to attend a dinner party where Dewey was a guest.<!--
Following the Dewey campaign's loss and the conversion of the Sandia Preparatory School into a military hospital, McCormick spent most of her time in Colorado, Shortly after she was discharged from the hospital, McCormick was diagnosed with pancreatitis. In 1974, the school opened a fine-arts center named for Simms and McCormick. The Rockford Chamber of Commerce posthumously named McCormick to its Northern Illinois Business Hall of Fame.