Elly Peterson, who started out as a secretary for the Michigan Republican Party, rose to become the national party’s assistant chairwoman and advocated a big-tent brand of Republicanism that was reflected in her impassioned support for the Equal Rights Amendment, died June 9 in Grand Junction, Colo. She was 94.
In 1963, six years after taking a secretarial job for the state party, she became assistant chairwoman of the Republican National Committee.
When she retired from the committee in 1970 after having returned for a second 2-year term, columnist David Broder wrote in The Washington Post that she would almost certainly have been named to lead the party “were it not for the unwritten sex barriers both parties have created around the job.”
Born in New Berlin, Ill., Elly McMillan attended William Woods College in Fulton, Mo., then a two-year women’s institution, and Suburban Business College in Oak Park, Ill. In 1935 she married William Peterson, who died in 1994. She leaves no immediate survivors.
Outgoing and energetic, she proved to be a superb saleswoman for the GOP.
Her active support for George Romney in his successful gubernatorial race in 1962 was rewarded with a suicide mission: to run against Sen. Philip Hart, a popular Democrat, in 1964. She ran a spirited campaign but was buried in the Democratic landslide of that election year.
At the time, Romney said, “She thinks like a man, looks like a woman and works like a dog.” Mrs. Peterson later said that she appreciated the thought but not the phrasing.
Mrs. Peterson was an ardent supporter of the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion rights.
Mrs. Peterson grew disillusioned with her party in the Reagan years.
She later declared herself a supporter of Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.
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