Nancy Hollister

Nancy Elizabeth Hollister (née Putnam; born May 22, 1949) is an American politician from the U.S. state of Ohio. Hollister was the first and, to date, only female governor of Ohio, serving briefly from December 1998 to January 1999.

Hollister attended Kent State University, and upon leaving college she became a housewife. She began her political career in the 1980s, becoming a member of the city council in Marietta and eventually winning the position of mayor. In 1994, George Voinovich picked her as his candidate for Lieutenant Governor, and she served from 1995 to 1998. After a failed congressional bid in 1998, she succeeded Voinovich as Governor after he resigned to become a U.S. Senator. She served as Governor for 11 days, taking few political actions during her brief tenure.

Almost immediately after leaving the governorship, Hollister was appointed to a seat in the Ohio House of Representatives. She won election to a full term in 2000 and 2002. In 2004, Hollister was defeated for re-election, attributed in part to her opposition to a constitutional amendment outlawing gay marriage.

Early life
Putnam was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, the daughter of Benjamin Hay Putnam Jr. (1925-2007) and Mary Elizabeth White (1926-1990). Her parents had married in 1945 in West Virginia and had moved briefly back to Terre Haute (her mother's hometown) before moving to Marietta, Ohio, where her father's family resided. Her 6th great-grandfather was Revolutionary War General Israel Putnam. Her 8th great-grandmother was Bathsheba Folger Pope, an accuser of witches during the Salem Witch Trials. She has five siblings: Emily, Esther, Sarah and Benjamin Hay Putnam, III.

Hollister attended Kent State University majoring in communications. She was active in protests on campus, including protesting curfews placed on women students, a policy which would later be abolished. Hollister left to marry her husband Jeff, just two months before the Kent State shootings.

Political career (1980–1994)
Nancy Hollister first entered public office when she was elected to the Marietta City Council in 1980. Hollister would serve on city council until being elected Mayor of Marietta in 1984. As Mayor, Hollister worked to attract new businesses to the area, promote tourism, and secured funding for a new bridge across the Ohio River.

Since Hollister was a mayor in Southeastern Ohio, Governor George Voinovich appointed Nancy Hollister as director of the Governor's Office of Appalachia. In this position, Hollister was responsible for coordinating federal and state efforts to improve life for the twenty-nine counties in Appalachia.

Lieutenant governor
In 1994, Hollister was selected by Voinovich as his running mate to replace incumbent lieutenant governor Mike DeWine, who was running for the U.S. Senate. Her selection was thought to be beneficial for Voinovich, who had lost many counties downstate in 1990, and helpful for attracting women to the ticket. Her election in November made her the and the first woman to be elected Lieutenant Governor. Hollister would oversee several State and Local Government Commissions. These included the Governor's Office of Appalachia, the Governor's Workforce Development Board, the Ohio Department of Agriculture, the Ohio Bureau of Employment Services, the Ohio School-to-Work Initiative, the Office of Housing and Community Partnership, the Ohio Coal Development Office, and the Ohio Farmland Preservation Task Force. In 1998, she was inducted into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame.

1998 bid for Congress
In 1996, Hollister began raising funds for a bid for Ohio Secretary of State in 1998. A bid to succeed Voinovich as governor was seen as complicated by Voinovich's implicit endorsement of Bob Taft for governor. In 1997, she began reconsidering and considered a bid for the 6th district against incumbent Democrat Ted Strickland. On July 1, 1997, Hollister announced her intent to run for congress. In the primary, Hollister defeated former congressman Frank Cremeans by 4 points. She faced difficulty due to her moderate stances, but won out due to a divided conservative vote. The race was viewed as highly competitive, in part due to the fact that the district had ousted an incumbent every year since 1990. A big issue in the race was education, as the district contained some of the least affluent school districts in the state. Strickland supported more government funding in schools and hiring more teachers, whereas Hollister supported reducing the size of the Department of Education to give funds through block grants. Hollister received the endorsements of George Voinovich and John Boehner, and campaigned alongside House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Bob Dole. On November 3, 1998, Hollister was defeated by Strickland 57% to 43%.

Governor of Ohio
On the same day Hollister was defeated in her bid for the 6th congressional district seat, Governor George Voinovich was elected to the United States Senate, and Bob Taft was elected to the governorship.

Voinovich resigned as governor on December 31, 1998 (so he could be sworn into the Senate three days later), and with that, Hollister became governor. Hollister became Ohio's first and to date only female governor. She only served 11 days in office - which would also make her Ohio's shortest-serving governor - as she was essentially finishing out Voinovich's term. During her transitory time in office, she signed a piece of legislation allowing farmers to sell land to local governments to ensure the land would remain farmland, and that local governments would pay the farmers dependent on land value. She was succeeded by Taft, whose term officially began on January 11, 1999.

Politics (2000–present)
Upon leaving the Governor's office, Hollister was appointed to the Ohio House of Representatives for the 96th district, replacing outgoing Rep. Tom Johnson, who took a job with Governor Taft. She ran for and was elected to the seat in 2000 and 2002, when she ran in the redrawn 93rd district. During her tenure, Hollister introduced a bill allowing nurses to prescribe prescription drugs. The bill went into effect in 2002.

In her final run for office to date, Hollister was defeated by Jennifer Garrison in 2004. A key issue in the campaign was Hollister's opposition to a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage. Garrison – the Democrat – ran to the ideological right of Hollister on the state's same-sex marriage ban.

She served on the board of trustees of the Ohio History Connection between 2011 and 2016.

In May 2016, she was appointed by Gov. John Kasich to fill a vacancy on the state Board of Education.

As of Oct 2020 she is an ad-hoc board member of the Friends of the Museums, which manages the Campus Martius Museum and Ohio River Museum in Marietta.

Personal life
She married Jeffrey Lynn Hollister, her boyfriend since high school on March 21, 1970. They have five children: Jonathan Dunham Hollister (b. 1970), Jeremy Douglas Hollister (b. 1973), Justin Harrington Hollister (b. 1976), Emily Elizabeth Hollister (b. 1979) and Sarah Katherine Hollister (b. 1982).