For the first time, nearly 40 female current or retired local elected officials met to celebrate their right to vote on Super Tuesday.
About 100 retired residents and elected officials filled the conference hall of the Oak Hammock retirement community, located at 5100 SW 25th Blvd. The event celebrated the centennial anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, which gave women in the U.S. the right to vote in 1920.
Some of the current and former elected officials represented Florida nationally, in the state Legislature and locally. The officials in attendance included Alachua County Sheriff Sadie Darnell, Supervisor of Elections Kim Barton, Archer Mayor Iris Bailey, Gainesville City Commissioner Gail Johnson and others.
“It was an epic struggle that we cannot forget, and that we all must honor,” said Barbara Oberlander, a retired Santa Fe history professor.
The event was hosted by Oak Hammock’s Institute of Learning in Retirement, a group that runs classes and education events for retired people, said Hammock resident Margaret Boonstra, the institute’s curriculum committee chair and the event’s organizer.
Alachua County has had a history of electing women to public office, Boonstra said. Pearl Maddox, the first woman in Alachua County elected to public office, was elected in 1919 — a year before the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified.
These elected officials met for this event on Super Tuesday, when 14 states were holding presidential primaries. Organizers wanted to encourage guests to exercise their right to vote in Florida's presidential primary on March 17.
Darnell, the first female county sheriff, who was elected in 2006 and has served since, is running for reelection. She’s currently the only female sheriff in the state.
As one of the first female officers in the Gainesville Police Department, she said she received mistreatment from other officers and was ignored by male officers, so much that she wouldn't receive backup when she called for it. She said she still climbed the ranks of the department despite how she was treated.
“It also made me a better leader, because I know what it feels like to not be welcome,” she said. “I know what it feels like to not be appreciated, and I know what it feels like to want to do the work and being told that you can’t.”
Boonstra said she wanted the event to honor the women of the past and celebrate the women in leadership today.
“To think back on 100 years on how the women struggled then, went to jail for their beliefs, we feel a real solidarity with each other.”
A voter makes her choice during the Democratic Presidential primary voting Tuesday, March 3, 2020, in Richmond, Va. (AP Photo/Steve Helber)
