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 DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Iowa, a hotbed for politics, is unfriendly terrain for female candidates. The state that holds the nation's first presidential caucus stands as one of just two — Mississippi is the other — never to have elected a woman governor or sent a woman to Congress.
It's a statistic that puzzles political observers — and one that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., considered a front-runner for her party's nomination in 2008, or any woman seeking the presidency can't ignore.
"I have no answers," said Des Moines lawyer Roxanne Conlin, who ran unsuccessfully for governor in 1982. "It's certainly distressing and embarrassing — quite embarrassing."
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