“Her candidacy received national
attention. It was probably the first
time a completely blind woman
was going to run for a seat in a
state legislature.”
Anita Lee Blair was born in Oklahoma City
on September 8, 1916. Blair came to El Paso
as a child in 1924. She graduated from Austin
High School in 1933. Politics ran in the
family: Her grandfather served in the
Oklahoma State Senate and her mother was
a cousin of Vice President Thomas Hendricks.
Blair lost her sight at age twenty in a car
accident and was later assisted by a German
shepherd named Fawn who was her guide
dog. The first in El Paso, the duo became well
known in the city. Blair was asked to talk to
various clubs and organizations. With Fawn’s
help Blair earned her Bachelor of Arts and
Master’s degrees from the College of Mines
and Metallurgy, now the University of Texas
El Paso.
Blair and Fawn became well known
nationally because of her career as a national
freelance lecturer traveling all over the
country speaking about accident prevention
to schools, factories, clubs and organizations.
The duo made national headlines again with
their escape from the LaSalle Hotel fire in
Chicago in 1946 and in 1950 when Blair
successfully protested being denied entry in
the U.S. Senate gallery because Fawn was not
allowed in.
Blair became more than just a lecturer,
advocating for the passage of safety
legislation in Congress and was working to
kill a bill that would have given unlimited
fundraising power to the National Safety
Council. Blair saw it as a money-making
gimmick. She claimed that in retaliation
people representing the National Safety
Council came to El Paso when she was
serving in the Legislature and told people she
was a communist.
Blair came back to El Paso in 1950 to make
an unsuccessful run for the state Legislature,
losing badly but not giving up. Instead she
prepared for a second run in 1952 with the
intention to eventually run for Congress. She
announced her candidacy to the El Paso
Times, saying, “I do not feel that I am going
to set the world on fire, but I feel that there is
a place for some practical work to be done.”
Her candidacy received national attention.
It was probably the first time a completely
blind woman was going to run for a seat in a
state legislature.
Anita ran as a populist, refusing any help
or support from any organization or defeated
politicians. She did not have the big money or
large organization that could have been
available if she had requested and received
the support of the establishment. She wanted
to run on the issues and be elected on her own
merit.
Blair ran on what she called a visual
approach, running newspaper advertisements
with photos of her and Fawn. She went on the
radio when she could not go to one of the
many campaign rallies that were held
throughout the county.
Blair was the only the woman on the 1952
ballot. The last woman at that point to be
elected countywide was Anna Marie Tobin.
Tobin was the first woman to hold a noneducation
related elected office. She was
elected in 1924 and resigned in 1941 because
of illness. Blair was just the sixth woman
from El Paso to run for the Legislature. The
first women to run were a pioneer El Paso
woman physician named Alice Merchant, and
Ressie Cloonan, who both ran on the
Republican ticket for the state House of
Representatives in 1922.
Blair’s platform included preserving free
enterprise, individual and state rights,
improving the schools without having to
increase taxes and opposing sales and income
taxes. Blair told Carol Taylor from the New
York-Telegraph & Sun that she wanted to
work for safety saying Texas did not have
much of a driver’s training program. Blair
also thought Texas was backward when it
came to education for the blind.
Blair tried to appeal to the working man
and went in front of labor unions. She went to
the workers directly, not just relying on the
unions. One of her newspaper advertisements
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