Main Line Margaret
| 🎀 | |
| Era | The Seventies |
|---|---|
| Age | 52-58 |
| Home | Bryn Mawr, PA |
| Demographic | wealthy suburban, white, Republican committeewoman |
| Lean | Swing voter |
| Race | white |
Margaret is a Republican committeewoman in her fifties on Philadelphia's Main Line, an Episcopalian active on her church vestry and her local hospital board. She is the cast's Eastern Establishment Republican, a swing voter because her party has moved away from her position.
Who they stand for
Margaret stands for the moderate wing of the Republican Party in the Northeast, known as the Rockefeller, Scranton and Javits wing. Hugh Scott of Pennsylvania led the Senate Republican minority, and Margaret Chase Smith represented this wing in Maine. It organised through county committees, hospital boards and local chapters of Planned Parenthood. It was careful with public money, internationalist in foreign policy, and liberal on civil rights. In 1970 this wing supported abortion reform, and Governor Rockefeller signed a repeal of New York's abortion law that year. Nixon turned against abortion reform in 1971, which was the first sign that the Republican Party as a whole was moving away from this wing's positions. Rockefeller became vice president in 1974. He was dropped from the Republican ticket in 1975 to satisfy the party's conservative wing. Reagan's 1976 primary challenge and John Anderson's 1980 independent run were this wing's last stands, fought inside and outside the party. Sun City Dot belongs to a different wing of the same party. Naperville Nancy shares Margaret's political outlook but does not hold office within the party organisation. Margaret's support in Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire belongs to the old tradition of Yankee Republicanism.
Playing to them
Margaret responds to a balanced budget, civil rights enforcement, conservation, a respected United Nations, family planning, and good manners in a candidate, and she judges the tone of a policy almost as closely as its substance. A president who governs in the manner of Eisenhower wins her support regardless of party. She does not forgive the Southern strategy, deficits run for political convenience, an Agnew-style attack on the press or the universities, or any accommodation of the John Birch Society. Winning her support costs the support of Delta Earl and Sun City Dot, who see her support for civil rights and internationalism as a surrender, and it costs the support of Concordia Hilda on the question of abortion. Bucks County Larry and Naperville Nancy are won over by the same competent moderation, which makes the three of them the anchor of a suburban centrist coalition. Southie Sean and Macomb Bev experience everything she admires as condescension.
Where they live
The five states where Main Line Margaret makes up the largest share of the electorate in the seventies:
- Pennsylvania
- Maine
- Vermont
- Delaware
- New Hampshire