Known for her "strong opinions," O'Connor became a suffragist, campaigning for women's right to political participation.[1][2] She was a charter member of the Illinois League of Women Voters.[2][3] The LWV and other organizations she was involved with began electing her as a delegate to national meetings.[2] She would receive national recognition for her work as a suffragist in 1929, alongside Jane Addams and Catherine Waugh McCulloch.[2] Through her activism, she also became friends with such prominent figures as Eleanor Roosevelt and Francis Perkins.[3]
Her activism came into conflict with her professional career when a new county clerk called for her resignation as deputy in 1894, claiming she was spending too much time on other activities.[2] However, she managed to hold on to her role until 1898, when she resigned and opened her own office as an independent businesswoman, offering legal, business, and real estate services.[2] From 1914 to 1926, O'Connor relocated to Chicago and Detroit, where she worked on major real estate deals, before returning to Rockford.[2][5][6]
An independent woman, O'Connor preferred wearing suit jackets and pants over dresses.[5] She advised other women looking to get into business to "forget the lipstick" and "take a man's chance."[4][5]
In 1911, Kate F. O'Connor was "elected" the first female mayor of Arcadia, Illinois, with newspapers touting her as first woman to become a mayor across the entire state.[7][8][9][10] Not to be confused with the community of the same name in Morgan County, Arcadia was a newly built "boom town" or "bazaar" in the Rockford area, established by Rockford's St. James Pro-Cathedral as a benefit for a local orphanage, making the title of "mayor" ceremonial.[7][8][9][10]
Arcadia's first mayor, William Hayes, was ousted, and O'Connor defeated a fellow suffragist, Regina Scholl, in the race to replace him.[7][9] The two candidates had presented their platforms via banners at a parade through town.[7][9] After her election, O'Connor appointed a "suffragette cabinet" with a female health commissioner, fire chief, school board president, and police chief.[9] She also enlisted women as "suffragette policemen" to "fine" local men, collecting money for the orphanage.[11]
The first female mayor of a proper town in Illinois would be Angela Rose Canfield of Warren in 1915.[12]
After women gained the right to vote nationwide in 1920, O'Connor continued her activism, focusing increasingly on labor rights, while simultaneously encouraging women to exercise their new political rights.[1][2] In Rockford, she pushed for female teachers to earn equal pay with their male colleagues.[1]
After she spent about a year representing the 12th Congressional District for the Illinois Democratic Women's Congressional Committee, in 1933, Illinois Governor Henry Horner appointed her as supervisor of a new minimum wage law for children and women in the state.[1][2][3] In that role, she advocated for women and children working in laundries, beauty shops, and other industries.[2] She became Illinois's first woman code officer when she was appointed state superintendent of women's and children's employment in 1937.[3] Then, in 1942, she became assistant to Thomas O'Malley, who oversaw the Wages and Hours division of the United States Department of Labor for the region of Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana.[1][2]
O'Connor was also heavily involved in AFGE Local 648 in Chicago, serving as the union local's president until just before her death.[6] After her resignation, she was named honorary president for life; she was also an honorary member of the Steamfitters and Plumbers unions.[6]
