The next day, Republicans nominated Eugene J. Sullivan, a Casper lawyer. The Democrats nominated Nellie. Afterward, some delegates came to the governor’s mansion with the news. Finally, 45 minutes before the deadline, Nellie accepted.
Sullivan campaigned hard. Nellie, still deep in her grief, did not, but her backers spoke widely and took out ads on her behalf. U.S. Senator John B. Kendrick, a Democrat, noted “how fitting it was that the Equality State be the first to elect a woman governor.”
In 1869, Wyoming Territory had been the first government in the world to grant women permanently the right to vote. In 1894, Wyoming Superintendent of Public Instruction Estelle Reel was the first woman ever elected to statewide office. In 1920, women won the vote nationwide. Now, just four years later, Nellie Tayloe Ross was elected the first woman governor in the nation.
She won easily, as it turned out, by 8,000 votes out of 79,000 cast—a much bigger victory than her husband’s was two years earlier.
THE FIRST WOMAN GOVERNOR IN HER OWN RIGHT
Ella T Grasso was the first woman to win the governorship of a state that was not married to a former governor that passed or was removed from office by other means. She won election in Connecticut in 1974. From Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame: