Working mothers are nothing new in the corporate world. But Governor Mom will be a test case of how well a female elected official can juggle work and family. Swift has dropped some balls before. As lieutenant governor she used state employees to baby-sit her daughter, took a state helicopter to fly home for Thanksgiving and accepted a cushy $25,000 teaching gig at a local university (money’s tight since her husband gave up his job to watch their daughter). Voters were outraged; pollsters haven’t seen such high unfavorable ratings since the Quayle era. “The backlash against her was just unrelenting,” says UMass political scientist Elizabeth Sherman. Supporters say Swift, who declined to be interviewed, is really a bright, articulate leader who will thrive as she emerges from Cellucci’s shadow. But even they criticize the political instincts that led her to offer only late, grudging apologies for her behavior (she also paid fines and quit the teaching gig).
With the state’s next gubernatorial election just 20 months away, rivals are already eying the race. The GOP’s top contender is Mitt Romney, a wealthy businessman who gave Sen. Edward Kennedy a serious challenge in 1994. Romney says he won’t consider getting into the race until the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, which he’s organizing, end in the spring of next year. Across the aisle, two Democrats are already campaigning while several more consider runs. Top billing belongs to former U.S. representative Joseph P. Kennedy II, RFK’s eldest son. He considered gubernatorial bids in 1990, 1994 and 1998, and his ongoing Hamlet act makes it hard to guess if he’ll really run. But in a state that hasn’t elected a Democratic governor since 1986, not everyone assumes the race can’t go to Swift. In this era of attack politics, it’s hard to slap around a new mom, says Warren Tolman, a Democrat who debated Swift in 1998 when she was eight months pregnant. And supporters hope the public will eventually warm to her style. As long as she doesn’t elevate Chief Diaper Changer to a cabinet-level position, she has nowhere to go but up.
