When Ella Tambussi Grasso ran for governor of Connecticut in 1974, she had not lost an election since she was first voted into the state’s General Assembly in 1952. She served as the 83rd Governor of Connecticut from January 8, 1975, to December 31, 1980, after rejecting past offers of candidacies for senate and governor. She was the first woman elected to this office and the first woman elected governor on her own merit, without being the wife or widow of a former governor.
Ella Grasso was born Ella Rosa Giovanna Oliva Tambussi in Windsor Locks, Connecticut in 1919, the daughter of Italian immigrants. A gifted student, she attended Mount Holyoke College, where she graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1940, majoring in economics and sociology. Two years later, she earned a master’s degree, also from Mount Holyoke. During World War II, she served as assistant director of research for the War Manpower Commission of Connecticut in Washington, D.C., eventually rising to the position of assistant director of research.
Grasso entered politics by joining the League of Women Voters in 1942, and one year later began working for the Connecticut Democratic Party as a speechwriter. She was elected to the Connecticut General Assembly in 1952 and 1954, becoming the first woman elected Floor Leader in 1955. From 1958 to 1970, she served as Connecticut's Secretary of the State.
During this time, Grasso became the first woman to chair the Democratic State Platform Committee, served as a member of the Platform Drafting Committee for the 1960 Democratic National Convention, and served as co-chair of the Resolutions Committees for the 1964 and 1968 Democratic National Conventions. In 1970 and again in 1972, she was elected to the U.S. Congress, where she amassed a strongly liberal voting record.
After a hard-fought campaign in 1974, Grasso was elected governor. She was re-elected in 1978 but had to resign in 1980 due to a diagnosis of ovarian cancer. She died less than six weeks after leaving office and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.