The written history of U.S. presidential campaigns is speckled with many a remarkable asterisk, not the least of which does homage to women. There is, for example, a bosomy young New Yorker named Victoria Claflin Woodhull, who ran for the presidency in 1872 as the Equal Rights Party candidate. Victoria billed herself as a Wall Street "businesswoman," publicly proclaimed her belief in spiritualism, vegetarianism, short skirts, legalized prostitution and free love. On election night she was in jail on an obscenity charge. She got very few votes. Ulysses Grant beat her out. Then...
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