For a brief period in 1992, Lynn Yeakel carried the hopes of many American women on her shoulders.
As she watched Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court hearings in 1991, she was one of millions of people outraged by the way the Senate Judiciary Committee treated Anita Hill, a law professor who had accused Mr Thomas of sexual assault. harassment.
The stance of the all-male, all-white committee scrutinizing a black woman and more or less dismissing her sexual harassment complaint — not a widely recognized dynamic at the time — propelled several women to office in what experts called the “Year of the Women.” .”
Ms. Yeakel (pronounced YAY-kul), a Pennsylvania Democrat who had never run for president before, was one of them.
She took on Senator Arlen Specter, a Republican from Pennsylvania, whose aggressive questioning of Ms. Hill at the hearings, which thrilled the nation, placed him at the top of the list of men most eager to beat female voters.
“Had it not been for those hearings,” Ms. Yeakel told DailyExpertNews in 1992, “it would never have occurred to me to argue against Arlen Specter.”
In the end she came up short. Yet she had caught the zeitgeist of a particular moment in history. As she told WHYY radio, in Philadelphia, she believed those hearings would in retrospect be seen as a turning point for women in seeking political power and standing up for their rights.
Ms. Yeakel died on January 13 at a medical center in Fort Myers, Florida. She was 80. The cause was complications from a blood cancer, said her husband, Paul Yeakel. They lived in Rosemont, Pennsylvania, and had a second home in Florida.
Ms. Yeakel was a longtime advocate for women’s rights and a fundraiser for women’s charities, but was largely unknown to the public when she challenged Mr. Specter, a former Philadelphia district attorney and incumbent two-year-old.
She had never run for office and barely registered in the polls. But during the Democratic primary, she had a surprising TV spot. It showed images of Mr. Specter who questioned Mrs. Hill; Ms. Yeakel then stops the footage and asks the viewer, “Did this make you as angry as me?”
She was the surprise winner of the five-time primary, earning 45 percent of the vote and becoming an overnight sensation. Initially she led Mr. Specter in the polls by 15 percentage points.
But Mr. Specter found his footing. He raised more than twice as much money as she did. He expressed some remorse for his treatment of Mrs. Hill, and said he understood why her complaint against Judge Thomas “touched a nerve in so many women.”
And he campaigned aggressively. He doubted Mrs. Yeakel’s ability. He criticized her husband for being a member of a country club that had never had a black member. And he criticized her father, a former congressman from Virginia, for his votes against civil rights.
Mrs. Yeakel noted that Mr. Specter focused on the men in her life, not her, but he erased her lead. In the end, he beat her by three percentage points.
Lynn Moore Hardy was born on July 9, 1941 in Portsmouth, Virginia. Her father, Porter Hardy Jr., a businessman, was a Democratic congressman from 1947 to 1968. Her mother, Lynn (Moore) Hardy, was a schoolteacher.
Lynn grew up in Virginia and attended Randolph-Macon Woman’s College (now Randolph College) in Lynchburg, Virginia. She graduated from Phi Beta Kappa in 1963 with a major in French literature. Much later, in 2005, she received a master’s degree in management from the American College of Financial Services in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.
Before running for the Senate, Ms. Yeakel was the co-founder and chief executive of Women’s Way, one of the first and largest fundraising coalitions committed to the advancement of women and girls.
After her senate candidate, she ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1994. President Bill Clinton appointed her Mid-Atlantic Regional Director for the Department of Health and Human Services that year.
Ms. Yeakel later joined Drexel University in Philadelphia as director of the medical university’s Institute for Women’s Health and Leadership. There, she founded the Women One Award and Scholarship Fund, which provides scholarships to medical students from underrepresented communities.
At Drexel, she also founded Vision 2020, now called Vision Forward. Its aim is to help women achieve social, economic and political equality with men.
She married Paul M. Yeakel in 1965. In addition to her husband, she leaves behind her daughter Courtney; her son, Paul Jr.; and six grandchildren.