As the first woman to succeed her husband in Congress,
widow Mae Ella Nolan set a precedent by championing the
legislative agenda of her late spouse, John Ignatius Nolan.
Congresswoman Nolan’s example influenced many future
widows. But her career, which included the distinction of
being the first woman to head a congressional committee
and all the attendant media attention, proved short-lived.
Mae Ella Hunt was born on September 20, 1886, to Irish
immigrants in San Francisco, California, and grew up in
its working-class neighborhoods. She attended the public
schools in San Francisco, St. Vincent’s Convent, and Ayers
Business College of San Francisco. Mae Ella worked at a
dry goods store run by her father before earning a certificate
in stenography and going to work at Wells Fargo Express.1
In 1913 she married John I. Nolan—a former iron molder
and labor activist—shortly after he was elected to the 63rd
Congress (1913–1915) on the Bull Moose Party ticket. The
couple raised a daughter named Corliss. John Nolan, a San
Francisco native and former member of the city’s board of
supervisors, had been active in the city labor movement and
political scene for years. He entered the iron molding trade
at age 14 and moved into the ranks of union leadership—as
a member of the national executive board of the molders’
union, as a delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council, and
as a lobbyist representing the labor council in Sacramento.
He played a prominent role in the Union Labor Party, at the
height of its influence in San Francisco politics during the
Progressive Era. Representing a House district that covered
southern San Francisco, Nolan eventually chaired the Labor
Committee and was considered the Republican Party’s
leading labor advocate, fighting aggressively against child
labor and working for protections for women in industrial
jobs.2
He was considered for Labor Secretary in President
Warren G. Harding’s Cabinet. Mae Nolan was his constant
companion. Corliss was known as the “Daughter of the
House of Representatives,” and became a regular on the
House Floor and a favorite of Speakers Joseph G. Cannon of
Illinois and Champ Clark of Missouri.3
John Nolan was elected unopposed to a sixth term in
November 1922 but died weeks after the election. The
Union Labor Party quickly nominated Mae Ella Nolan to
succeed her husband. She also received the support of the
executive committee of the California Women’s Republican
League.4
While campaigning, Nolan embraced a platform
that called for relaxing Prohibition laws and supported labor
interests. Though the campaign was pushed back two weeks to allow prospective candidates to gather signatures for their
nomination, Nolan was the odds-on favorite. On January
23, 1923, she was elected as a Republican to the remaining
few weeks of the 67th Congress (1921–1923) with a
47-percent plurality, running roughly 2,000 votes ahead of
her nearest opponent, San Francisco supervisor Edwin G.
Bath. On that same day, voters also sent Nolan to the full
term in the 68th Congress (1923–1925), set to commence
on March 4, 1923. She out-polled six other competitors,
again topping Bath by more than 3,000 votes, to win with a
40-percent plurality.5
Nolan was an immediate novelty because she was
the first widow to serve in Congress. As the Los Angeles
Times observed at the time of her election, Mae Nolan
was “intimately associated with the Washington chapters
of her husband’s life” and familiar with the “pangs and
diversions” of congressional politics. In announcing her
platform, Nolan likened her program to a memorial for her
husband. “I owe it to the memory of my husband to carry
on his work,” Nolan told the San Francisco Examiner. “His
minimum-wage bill, child labor laws and national education
bills all need to be in the hands of someone who knew him
and his plans intimately. No one better knows than I do his
legislative agenda.”6
On February 12, 1923, she was escorted by California
Congressman Charles Forrest Curry to take the oath of
office. “I come to Washington, not as a stranger, but
as one among friends,” Nolan said. “I come with new
responsibilities and in a new attitude, however. I can not
forget that my election was a tribute to the memory of
my late husband … and in the belief and expectation that
I, who was his close associate in his legislative work for
many years, could best carry that work on in his place.” To
help manage her office, she employed her sister, Theresa
Hunt Glynn, who had worked for six years as John Nolan’s
secretary. Nolan also relied on Representative Julius Kahn,
San Francisco’s other Congressman, and a personal friend of
her husband, for counsel and advice.7
In the 67th Congress, Nolan was appointed to the
Committee on Woman Suffrage. When the 68th Congress
convened in late 1923, she received an assignment on the
Committee on Labor. Nolan also was appointed, at the
opening of the 68th Congress, to chair the Committee
on Expenditures in the Post Office and received
national press attention as the first woman to chair a
congressional committee.8
Claiming that the workload with her additional
assignments was too much, she dropped the Woman
Suffrage Committee assignment. It was a convenient
moment for Nolan to distance herself from the women’s
rights movement with which she had a relatively cool
relationship, largely because her core labor constituency was
unsupportive. In particular, the American Federation of
Labor vigorously denounced the Equal Rights Amendment
(introduced in Congress during Nolan’s first year) because
of perceptions that it would erode Progressive Era workplace
protections for women in industrial jobs. As the only
woman in the 68th Congress, Nolan minimized gender
differences. “A capable woman is a better representative than
an incapable man, and vice versa,” Nolan said. “After all,
the chief responsibility in legislative matters rests with the
electorate. If it is alert, informed, and insistent, it will get
good representation in Washington from either a man or a
woman Member of Congress.”9
Nolan sought to improve wage conditions for laborers,
taking up the fight for John Nolan’s minimum daily wage
bill for federal employees. “Uncle Sam should be a model
employer,” Mae Nolan said in late 1923. “Wages and
working conditions in the Government service should
conform to a proper American standard of living. I am in
complete sympathy with the movement to increase the
compensation of the postal workers and to provide a more
generous retirement system.” Nolan also supported lowering
taxes on working-class Americans and raising them on
the wealthy. Further, she championed a bonus for World
War I veterans (an idea approved by Congress in 1922 but
vetoed by President Harding). “The men who risked their
lives in the trenches of Europe should receive their adjusted
compensation before we undertake to reduce the tax burden
of the very rich,” Nolan declared.10 In her one complete
term in Congress, Congresswoman Nolan also gained
passage of several bills related to her district, including
one transferring the Palace of Fine Arts from the federal
government’s Presidio to the city of San Francisco and
another authorizing construction of a federal building.11
Despite her ability to secure solid committee positions,
Nolan was often rebuffed as she stepped out of her
husband’s shadow into the full glare of the public spotlight.
She expressed frustration at the unblinking press attention
lavished on her during her early House career, claiming that
she was misquoted and misrepresented regularly. She made
relatively few floor speeches and soon withdrew from the reporters who sought her out for interviews. By her second
year in Congress, the Washington Post reported that Nolan
“retired into her shell and lobbyists say it is with difficulty
that they can obtain a few words with her.” When she left
the House, a Washington Post headline claimed (not quite
accurately) that “in Congress 2 years, she did no ‘talking.’”12
Representative Nolan declined to run for re-election to
the 69th Congress (1925–1927), citing the time-consuming
workload and her responsibilities as a single parent.
While in Washington, she had placed Corliss in a private
boarding school and her daughter was unhappy with the
arrangement. “Politics is entirely too masculine to have
any attraction for feminine responsibilities,” Nolan said in
announcing her decision. “On the West Coast we can have
a normal home life.”13 Representative Nolan retired from
Congress and returned to San Francisco with her daughter.
In later years, she moved to Sacramento, California, where
she died on July 9, 1973.14
View Record in the Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress
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