page_title: Norma Paulus
section_title: Later life and family
hierarchical_section_title: Norma Paulus / Later life and family
caption_attribution_description: English: Norma Paulus, former Oregon Secretary of State with Jefferson Smith, who had recently been elected to the Oregon House of Representatives
context_page_description: Norma Jean Paulus was an American lawyer and politician in the state of Oregon. A native of Nebraska, she was raised in Eastern Oregon before becoming a lawyer. A Republican, she first held political office as a representative in the Oregon House of Representatives, and then became the first woman elected to statewide public office in Oregon when she became Oregon Secretary of State in 1977. Paulus later served as Oregon Superintendent of Public Instruction for nine years. She made unsuccessful bids to become Governor of Oregon and United States Senator. Prior to her death on February 28, 2019, Paulus lived in Portland, where she was involved with several non-profit groups and sponsored a ballot measure to create open primaries in Oregon's statewide elections.
context_section_description: Norma and her husband William had two children, Elizabeth and Fritz. In 1996, she was named to the  National Assessment Governing Board by United States Secretary of Education Richard Riley. She was conferred with honorary degrees by Willamette University in 1999, Whitman College, Lewis & Clark College, and Linfield College. In December 2000, she was appointed as the executive director of the Oregon Historical Society and served in that position until 2003. From 2000 until 2013, Paulus was a member of the Oregon State Capitol Foundation Board. She was an original member of the organization and served as chair of the group. She served on the boards of the High Desert Museum in Bend, the Oregon Coast Aquarium in Newport, and the City Club of Portland. In 2004, she received the University of Oregon's Distinguished Service Award.
  She worked to raise funds for a statue honoring former governor and longtime friend Tom McCall, with the statue completed and installed in Salem along the Willamette River in 2008. In 2008, Paulus and co-petitioner Phil Keisling, also a former Oregon Secretary of State, brought Ballot Measure 65 to the November ballot, in an effort to reform the state's primary election system for partisan races.
  In 2015, then-Oregon Secretary of State Kate Brown dedicated the 2015–2016 edition of the Oregon Blue Book to Paulus, in honor of her lifelong service to the state, including her role as the first woman elected to that office, and statewide, in Oregon history.
  In May 2017, Oregon State University Press published "The Only Woman In the Room": the Norma Paulus story, which is based on oral histories and archives held at Oregon Historical Society Research Library, Willamette University Archives, and the Oregon State Archives.
  Norma Paulus died in a Portland nursing home on February 28, 2019, from complications of vascular dementia, at the age of 85.
caption: Paulus and Jefferson Smith in 2008
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