In 2012, Republican opponent Todd Akin told reporters that the forthright Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) “really hadn’t been very ladylike” during their Senate race debate.
“It reminded me of when I was a young girl, and I had a favorite teacher who said, ‘Claire, you’ve got to stop talking so much in class. The boys aren’t going to like you.’ I was crushed. I thought that I had something to say,” Ms. McCaskill said at the George Washington University on Wednesday evening.
In her new, tell-all memoir, “Plenty Ladylike,” the senator challenges the notion that women must act demure and timid to succeed both personally and professionally. Her book recounts her life in politics, from her election as homecoming queen to becoming the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Missouri.
The senator joined an enthusiastic Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) on the Betts Marvin Theatre stage to discuss her book during a Newsmaker Series event co-hosted by Politics and Prose and GW.
Mr. Booker called his interviewee a “binding force” in the Senate and also reveled in the opportunity to grill his senior colleague with questions.
“The problem is I have to face her in the Senate tomorrow, so I’m probably going to be a little nice to you tonight,” he admitted.
George Washington University students, faculty, staff and community members filled Betts Marvin Theatre to listen to the senators. (Zach Marin/GW Today)
But Ms. McCaskill did not hold back about the challenges she faced and risks she took throughout her life.
She recounted the now well-documented tale of how she successfully manipulated the Republican primary to ensure she could win the U.S. Senate election in 2012—what she calls the biggest gamble of her political career.
“The three opponents who were running against me, there wasn’t a dime’s worth of difference in terms of the positions they held and how they would vote in the U.S. Senate,” Ms. McCaskill said. “But Todd [Akin] was different, because Todd had no filter. And he was driven by deeply held religious convictions. In fact, he probably wants to run away with the county clerk in Kentucky.”
Ms. McCaskill instructed her campaign staff to poll Missouri Republicans in July 2012 to find out what primary voters liked about Mr. Akin. She then helped him spread his conservative message through television advertisements.
“It said, ‘Todd Akin is too conservative for Missouri.’ And we listed the things that the Republican primary voters loved about him, which also happened to be the things that independent voters didn’t like about him,” she said. “So it was a twofer for me. Because you only win Missouri if you win the independent voters.”
The $1.7 million so-called “Operation Dog Whistle” worked exactly as planned: Mr. Akin won the primary and Ms. McCaskill swept the general election that most had believed was out of her reach.
“I certainly have learned in politics that my gut is the only thing that keeps me authentic to who I am,” she said. “There is this thing of knowing who you are and being really comfortable with it. And that’s something I think women struggle with sometimes, especially in the political realm, because they’re trying so hard to fit in.”
She admitted, though, that being a woman—even in the male-dominated Senate—also comes with its advantages.
“There is an assumption that women are not doing this just because they want to be powerful. There is assumption that women are driven by substance,” Ms. McCaskill said. “There is an assumption of honesty.”
Ms. McCaskill, a vocal supporter of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, recently said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that her Senate colleague Sen. Bernie Sanders was “too liberal” to make it to the White House. When questioned about her comment by an audience member Wednesday night, Ms. McCaskill said she believes the media is giving Mr. Sanders (I-Vt.) a “free pass” by failing to scrutinize him for his self-identified socialist principles.
“I come from a state where they hate Obama, because they call him a socialist,” she said. “I do not believe that someone who has identified himself as a socialist throughout his political career would be elected.”
However, she did suggest, to the enthusiastic cheers from the audience, that GW “would be a great place a Bernie-Hillary debate.”
When asked what advice Ms. McCaskill had for women at the beginning of their careers, she stressed that women do not have to choose between being a mother and having a career. She also encouraged young women to resist the temptation to “dumb down.”
“Own your ambition, own your intellect and push as hard as you know how,” she said.
And for any women in the audience aspiring to run for political office she promised that she’d write them a check.
“But you have to ask me for it.”