Hayley Cleveland felt her hopes swell when she saw a Harris-Walz sign hanging on a farm fence in her one-stoplight Missouri town. She had raised her daughter, Aihva Cleveland, here as a single mom, politically isolated in a sea of green fields and red politics. She was excited: This year, 18-year-old Aihva would vote for the first time, and for a woman president.
A generation of girls has watched a woman campaign for the presidency twice. Twice in a decade, a majority of women have voted for a female president – and lost. Men have controlled the most powerful office in the United States for all of the country's 248 years.
The women who supported Vice President Kamala Harris' surprise sprint for the presidency – including mothers who wanted this for their girls – did so ardently, as if parenting itself had become political. Hayley Cleveland early-voted five days before Election Day. Moved to share her experience with like-minded people outside her Republican-majority town, she swiped open her TikTok account and started recording a video from the driver's seat of her car.
"Whenever I walked inside the county courthouse, it was full," she said to the camera. "It wasn't just full with people. It was full of women.
It was full of women who have shown up to vote." Most of the women, she said, brought their children and most of the children were little girls. "I obviously don't know how they voted," she said, "but women are showing up in this election like a lot of us haven't .
