Today, Vancouver’s first woman mayor will chair her first meeting. Anne McEnerny-Ogle was elected as the city’s first female mayor in November with an overwhelming majority. She was officially sworn in on Jan. 1 and will take her oath of office one more time during tonight’s city council meeting.
To many — including McEnerny-Ogle — it was a surprise that Vancouver was so late to reach this historical first. The city was incorporated in 1857.
Clark County has a history filled with impactful women in leadership roles. Women such as Rose Besserman, Pat Jollota and Connie Kearney come to mind.
McEnerny-Ogle said she doesn’t expect any issues to arise because of her gender; it is 2018 after all.
Gender didn’t cause much issue for Kearney either, it seems. Kearney was 33 when she was elected as the first female Clark County commissioner back in 1976. She said certainly then it was rare for women to be in a leadership role, “but I was comfortable,” she added.
During her time on the board of commissioners, Kearney served with Ned Smith, Dean Cole and Dick Granger.
Mutual respect
“They were easy to work with,” she said. “I respected them and I think the feeling was mutual.”
Things were different back then in another way, Kearney said. Partisan politics played less of a role than they do now.
“It didn’t seem to matter which party any of us belonged to,” she said. “We worked together well; it was never acrimonious or divisive.”
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