Victoria Woodhull ran for president nearly 50 years before the Nineteenth Amendment allowed women to vote in presidential elections. Though historians can’t agree on whether her name actually appeared on nationwide ballots (or whether she received any votes), they concur that her run was historic—not only was she the first woman to seek the office, but her running-mate, Frederick Douglass, was the first African-American ever nominated for Vice President.
She announced her run in a letter to the New York Herald in 1870: “I…claim the right to speak for the unenfranchised women of the country, and believing as I do that the prejudices which still exist in the popular mind against women in public life will soon disappear, I now announce myself as candidate for the Presidency.” But Woodhull was controversial and polarizing. A fierce believer in free love, she hated how society condemned liberated women, yet turned a blind eye to men’s dalliances. Her presidential run suffered a fatal blow when she was arrested on obscenity charges for writing an article about an adulterous love affair between Henry Ward Beecher, a powerful minister, and a parishioner just days before the election. Woodhull’s campaign was met with widespread derision, but it’s unclear if she could have taken office even if she had won—she was only 34 at the time of the election.
Interesting that nobody at the time noted the issue with Woodhull’s age, and not just because they discounted her for other reasons. She would have been six months shy of her 35th birthday on inauguration day 1873.
There is some later precedent there, though. In 1934 Rush D. Holt was elected to the Senate at age 29, he waited until his 30th birthday on June 19, 1935 to take the oath of office, over six months after the start of the term he was elected to. A few other Senators and Representatives in the 1800s were also a year or two short, most notably Henry Clay, but nobody seems to have objected or even noticed. Joe Biden was 29 on election day, but turned 30 before taking office.
Hard to imagine anybody getting away with that today, particularly for President, except on the Biden precedent that the relevant date is the start of the term and not election day if their birthday falls between the two.