Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from Radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, May 7, 1958, a letter is publicly released supposedly written by Andy Nutsen, demanding that his wife, Minnesota Representative Koya Nutsen, withdraw from politics and return home.

Koyanutzen was a member of the Minnesota House of Representatives for four years, then

beginning in 1955, represented Northwest Minnesota in the U.S. house, but after her estranged

husband Andy wrote this letter which got picked up by the press imploring her to

return home to domestic life, she was embroiled in scandal. It became known as the Koya Come Home Letter, one of the more egregious

examples of sexism in American politics. We're going to talk about it, but first a quick

shout out to listener Matthew Kley who suggested this topic.

So thank you Matthew.

But here to discuss is, as always, Nicole Hammer of Columbia.

Hello Nicky.

Hello, Jody.

And I'm very excited to welcome someone who I've done a lot of podcasting with but not for a while my former 538 colleague now with CNN

It is very nice to say this again Harry Anton welcome to the show

Shalom happy to be here. So Harry's gonna to be with us for a few episodes, including this one which I think was kind

of new to all of us and that's sort of one of the nice things about this show.

It pulls us a bit out of our wheelhouse sometimes.

So maybe before we get to the particulars of this story and what it teaches us, can we just

lay the groundwork of late 1950s, female representative in Congress from the Midwest.

Harry, how rare is that in this time?

It's extraordinarily rare, Jody.

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