Campbell, Clara

Clara Campbell was elected to the Idaho State House of Representatives in 1898. She had  run for County Treasurer for Boise County, Idaho, in an earlier campaign that year, but lost the race. Campbell then ran and won a seat in the state House of Representatives, representing Boise, on the Republican ticket. The victory was a narrow one and she survived a legal challenge of it by her male opponent. In that year Democrat Harriet Noble and Populist Mary Allen Wright were also elected to the state house. Campbell sponsored a bill to establish a state university.  Campbell was a suffragist, active in the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and the Women's Relief Corps.
Campbell was born and schooled in Somers, Connecticut.  In  1867 she married, at the age of twenty-one,  William Campbell, a Civil War veteran. They had four children. They lived in the East for a few years and then moved West  permanently.