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Schultz’s interest in politics and social reform
began when she helped organize the local chapter
of the League of Women Voters and attended every
board of supervisors meeting for her first 10 years
in Marin (a record few politicians could match). Her
husband supported her political ambitions, she said
in a 1981 interview in The Pacific Sun, “because he
realized they were motivated by a deep interest in
government, and a knowledge of it.”
During these years she worked as a bookkeeper
for the local school district and campaigned for a
new council-manager form of Mill Valley govern-
ment, which voters approved in 1941. In 1946 she was
elected to the city council — its first female member,
and her first political office — beating six male con-
tenders. Years later she told the Marin Independent
Journal that the men on the council denied her the
mayor’s seat, even though she’d won the most votes,
which traditionally should have gotten her the job.
She served on the council six years.
Path to Higher Office
In 1950, appalled by lobbyist influence and corruption in state government in Sacramento, Schultz
decided to run for the California Assembly. She campaigned as a Democrat on a reform platform and lost;
Marin County was heavily Republican at the time. In
1952 she was chosen as a delegate to the Democratic
National Convention in Chicago, where she backed
the reform candidate Estes Kefauver.
From top: Schultz files campaign
papers with the Marin County clerk
in 1964; a June 1960 page from the
Marin Independent Journal focuses
on the construction of the civic center
and includes a campaign ad for
Schultz at the bottom.
