Grace McGregor Kramer, Scranton Delegate
“Hillary will be the first president who was a working mother.”
From Beaver County to Bucks County, delegates are traveling across the Keystone State to support Hillary Clinton at the Democratic National Convention. This week we’re sharing the delegates’ remarkable stories of resilience and tenacity.
I was born and raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania. I grew up in a political family. Both my parents worked in business but were very involved in the political scene. Two of my grandfathers were city councilmen and my uncle was mayor, so I was raised to think that becoming involved in public life was something that you would do if you saw a need. It was something that was always discussed at the dinner table.
I went to school for business in Philadelphia and I graduated in 2010. I moved back three years ago to work in my family business, which is a structural steel, iron manufacturing, and construction company. We have a manufacturing facility in Scranton and we do a lot of construction work throughout the Northeast. We proudly have local unions, a shop operation, and a field operation.
Scranton’s not the most prosperous academic area, so I feel really good about the fact that we’re providing good manufacturing jobs here. The things that Hillary has talked about are important from my perspective as a working mom. I really love what Hillary has said about affordable childcare and paid family leave.
I have had every advantage: I live close to my parents, I had full paid maternity leave, and I have a really supportive husband. I cannot imagine what life is like for people without those things. I think that every advantage that we give to mothers, as children begin their lives, will have huge ramifications throughout their whole development. Also, I’m just really passionate about small business. Infrastructure improvement is also something that I think is really important.
Do you have any personal anecdotes or stories about the struggles facing working parents today?
I have friends everywhere that are struggling with these issues everyday. Becoming a mom should be one of the most exciting times of your life. Too often, working parents have to make the decision of whether or not they’re going to spend time with their child or whether they’re going to pay off their student loans.
For many of my friends, it’s a big struggle to balance. It’s a struggle to make everything work. There are so many businesses that don’t have paid family leave. In around 45 states, the cost of child care is more than the state college tuition. That’s a lot to be putting on young people that are probably carrying on student loans of their own.
That’s definitely going to be a growing issue. As our generation gets older, we’re faced with more questions about student loans, jobs, health care, and wanting to have family, but also wanting to have economic security. We need someone in government who’s going to address these issues.
That’s the biggest thing. Hillary will be the first president who was a working mother, which I think gives her a unique perspective.
Hillary has proven throughout her whole career how much she cares about children. I think that at its core, when we’re talking about working mothers and working families, it really is about how we can support kids.
Parents are their kids’ teachers. We need to give them every advantage economically by having a robust job market and giving them the flexibility to be with their children at the very beginning of their life.
What do you hope the world is like when your one-year old son is an adult?
I want my son Teddy to live in a world where the first headline of the day isn’t something that is more disheartening than the headline the day before. In the light of the past few weeks, it’s been so difficult to imagine raising my son in a world where there’s so much turmoil. I hope that there is peace among people of all races and religions. I hope to raise him to be open-minded and accepting of people who are different from him.
That’s the wonderful thing about the United States: We embrace people of all different cultures. I want my son to live in a world where we actually embody the ideals that our country was founded upon.
I think that makes this election so important and pivotal. We have a really great candidate, Hillary Clinton, who’s amazing, and then we have Donald Trump on the other side, who’s very different. If he’s elected, we lose all this progress that we’ve made.
What is so different about this election is, if you look back to 2008 or 2012, you had two good candidates in the general election who might have differed on policy but at the end of the day, were good people who had similar visions for the country. They just differed on how to get there. That is what’s so different about this election. There are such different visions for what we want the country to be on either side and that’s what so scary and disheartening about this election. I feel so lucky that we have such a strong candidate in Hillary Clinton, who is going to promote the kind of America that we want to have for our children.
When did you decide to support Hillary?
Oh, I have loved her forever. I supported her in 2008. She has roots in Scranton, where I’m from, and I just see so much of Scranton in her. She’s just a scrappy, tenacious person that is always going to fight for all of America. She’s not just going to fight for the people that support her. She’s going to fight to make America better for every single person in the United States and that’s really why I identify with her, why I support her, and why my family supports her. I’ve been so lucky to be able to support her and meet her and spend the last year trying to help get her elected.
What does the historic moment of possibly having the first woman president mean to you?
When it was clear she was going to be the nominee, I was alone in my living room watching. I was so moved because it was incredibly historic to think what life was like even a generation ago and 100 years ago. Women didn’t even have the right to vote.
It’s incredible to see how she blazed this trail. It’s going to be so historic when we nominate her to be the Democratic Party’s nominee at the birthplace of our nation in Philadelphia. It’s incredibly poetic and historic. It will be incredible for the United States to have a woman as president.
Yeah, I think it will be so amazing. Teddy, your son, is always going to always think that women can be president. Anyone can be president.
It will just be an assumption.
What’s your favorite thing about living in Pennsylvania?
Pennsylvania is incredibly beautiful. It has an incredible natural beauty. And I just love the people. Pennsylvanians are hard-working, tough Americans. We’ve seen struggles economically and they just put their heads down and keep working. I believe that Pennsylvania represents some of the best of America.
I know that Hillary’s the right person to keep us safe and take America in the right direction. As a mother and a business owner, I believe that she is going to continue to build the culture of inclusiveness that we are so lucky to have our nation founded on.
