CLOSE ENCOUNTER
Former star stood up for women.
Campaigning with Shirley Temple Black
During the 1960s, I was active in the San Mateo, California, Young Republicans. This was when Barry Goldwater ran for president and Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California. One of my favorites among people I met during those years was Shirley Temple Black, the former child movie star, who lived with her husband, Charles Black, in the hills of San Mateo County.
My mother had been a big fan of Shirley Temple and told me a lot about her and her films when I was growing up. The star I met in about 1966 was almost 40, soft-spoken and fun, still flashing her famous dimples.
Soon after, she ran for the Republican nomination—the press called her Mrs. Shirley Temple Black—for a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. She said her goal was “to break the all-male hold on California’s congressional seats.” Though favored, she lost to Paul McCloskey, a decorated Korean War vet who took an antiwar stance. Reports at the time said that many Democrats crossed party lines to vote in the open primary election.
Then I decided to run for the leadership of the San Mateo Young Republicans. Shirley was happy to support a female candidate and posed with me for a publicity photo. Gender aside, I was the best qualified, and right up until the election, no one opposed me.
Sadly, in the end, my campaign went no better than Shirley’s. At our annual meeting in January 1968, male students from Stanford decided they didn’t want a woman as chairman, and quickly formed a coalition with two other all-male delegations to defeat me with a male candidate they nominated from the floor.
I went on to be the manager of a congressional campaign and spent a summer working in Washington, D.C., but I didn’t pursue a career in politics. I became a lawyer.