She was a "feisty and feminine fifty-year-old with the unmistakable Dorothy Hamill wedge of gray hair . . . a congressman's daughter [with] a wardrobe befitting a First Lady . . . an unlikely standard-bearer . . . a former full-time mother . . .," gushed The Washington Post (August 26, 1992). That Lynn Yeakel also happened to be the woman who won a hard-fought primary to become Pennsylvania's Democratic Senate candidate was mentioned, but it was not until halfway through the Post's lengthy profile that any of the credentials she brought to the race were noted. The Post's next-day profile of incumbent Republican Senator Arlen Specter, however, led with the facts that he had been "a crimebusting district attorney and a mayoral hopeful."

The New York Times gave the world much the same view of Illinois's 1992 Senate candidates Carol Moseley-Braun and Richard Williamson: "She is commanding and ebullient, a den mother with a cheerleader's smile; he, by comparison, is all business, like the corporate lawyer he is . . . ." Not until the twenty-second paragraph did the Times note that Moseley-Braun was also a lawyer and a former federal prosecutor and veteran state senator, as well.

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