Tanya Melich

Tanya Melich co-founded the National Women's Political Caucus and was an early leader of the National Women's Education Fund, which focused on educating women in gaining political power.[1] Melich attended every Republican National Convention from 1952 through 1996 except 1984.[2] Melich served on the staffs of Nelson Rockefeller, Jacob Javits, Charles Goodell, and John Lindsay.[1] In 1998, she left the Republican Party over women's issues. She coined the phrase, "Republican war against women."[2] She now considers herself a Jeffords independent in the mold of the former U.S. Senator from Vermont.[1]

At the 1988 Republican National Convention in New Orleans, Louisiana, Melich tried to remove the pro-life plank from the party platform and substitute a neutral position on abortion. She was acting at the time as the executive director of the New York State Republican Family Committee. Her proposal was shelved in the platform hearings by conservative forces led by Marilyn Thayer, a New Orleans Republican activist who chaired the platform subcommittee on family issues and who in 1996 was elected president of the National Federation of Republican Women, the party conservatives kept the pro-life language intact. Years later, Melich wrote about her experiences at the convention in her book, The Republican War Against Women: An Insider's Report from Behind the Lines.[3]

Her father, Mitchell Melich, served in the Utah State Senate and ran unsuccessfully for governor of Utah in 1964 against the Democrat Calvin L. Rampton.

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