This experience served her well when her husband died on March 28, 1925, in the middle of his seventh term in Washington, D.C. Spurred by pressure from the Republican Party and the American Legion who approved of her stance on veteran's issues and wanted the sympathy vote, she was urged to run for her late husband's seat. She ran in a special election as the Republican candidate for Representative to the 69th United States Congress from the 5th District of Massachusetts, and beat Eugene Foss, the former Governor of Massachusetts, with a landslide 72 percent of the vote. Like Mae Ella Nolan and Florence Prag Kahn before her, she won her husband's seat.