Long-time DFL activist Jackie Stevenson passed away last night. She will be missed by many, especially in CD3.
As a child playing on her front porch, Mary Jacqueline Stevenson, listened as her father sat with his friends and solved the problems of the world. At her father’s knee she heard, “We are a part of the haves and we need to help the have-nots.” The message stuck.
While a senior at St. Paul Central, Jackie Stevenson worked on her first political campaign. Rep. Gene McCarthy was running for re-election and Jackie organized her classmates to do mailings on his behalf.
In 1966, when she moved to Hopkins, she decided to get involved in local politics. That is when she met Kitty Alcott and Jenny Arimond who became her mentors. When they found out that she was a legal secretary, they quickly recruited her as a party secretary. In rapid succession she served as secretary of her precinct, her senate district, her congressional district and, in 1980, the state DFL.
First elected to the state Constitution and Bylaws Commission in 1974, she is still a member of the commission.
For more than ten years, she was a state DFL director before being elected to the Democratic National Committee in 1999. She continued to serve on the DNC through the 2008 national convention.
Jackie has served on steering committees for a number of presidential campaigns, most recently as a strong supporter of Hillary Clinton. She has been a delegate to every democratic national convention since 1988 and was a Presidential Elector in both 1996 and 2008.
One of the preeminent feminists in the state, she has been on the board of the DFL Feminist Caucus since 1976 and has been its president on three separate occasions. She is a founder of the DFL Women’s Hall of Fame.
Over the years, Jackie has a mentored dozens if not hundreds of women and men in the party.
For her son, she was little league coach. For her daughter, she helped found the Girl’s Softball League, where she was also a coach. She calls her two children and now her two grand children, her reason for living. She has been active in the Abortion Rights Council, the Domestic Abuse Project and Sojourner Project, Inc. She enjoys gardening and playing marathon bridge.
Democratic Visions Retrospective on Jackie Stevenson
A few short clips of Jackie helping Representative John Benson during his 2010 campaign along with a collage of a few among the thousands of political leaders and colleagues with whom she was friends.
