Md. has sent only 8 women to Congress. How can we call ourselves progressive?
Most of us know that Marylanders have been represented by an all-male congressional delegation since Rep. Donna Edwards lost her bid to replace retiring
Sen. Barbara Mikulski in 2017. But did you know only eight women have ever served Maryland in Congress? Over 100 years since women’s suffrage, in one of the bluest states, and women are not even in double digits. Meanwhile, Marylanders elected eight times as many congressmen named William, John or Charles as they did women. How can we call ourselves a progressive state with such lopsided access to elected office?
It was a full two decades after women’s suffrage before the first Congresswoman from Maryland, Katherine Byron, was elected to fill her husband’s seat when he died in office in 1941. At the time, widows were considered a non-divisive placeholder until a man could be properly elected, and she dutifully stepped down after one term. It was another 30 years before a second woman was elected.
In 1972, Republican Marjorie S. Holt broke the dry spell, and she was joined in the next two elections by Democrats Gladys
Noon Spellman (1974) and Mikulski (1976). In the 1978 election, our state was briefly at the forefront of female federal representation, when Katherine Byron’s son also died in office and his wife became the fourth female U.S. Representative from Maryland. In a sign of incremental progress, Democrat Beverly Byron didn’t resign, eventually serving eight terms. It was an impressive delegation for the time: One-quarter of all 16 women in Congress in 1979 were from Maryland; they made up 44% of the state’s House representatives.
Unfortunately, that was also a high-water mark. In the ’80s, the number of newly elected women ticked down to two (Republicans Helen Delich Bentley and Constance A. Morella), before vanishing in the ’90s. The 21st century ushered just one woman into the House, Democrat Donna Edwards. Maryland has only ever elected one Black woman to federal office and only one female U.S. Senator; two of our districts (1st and 7th) have never elected a woman to Congress.
Voicing support for women’s issues is no longer enough. We need equal representation to reflect and better serve our communities. I confess I voted for Sen. Chris Van Hollen over Donna Edwards in the 2016
Democratic primary. He’s a good senator, but that’s how we got here — women like me deciding it’s enough to have a progressive male voice in the room. No more.
Our state has a rich, talented pool of female public servants. Emerge Maryland and others have done incredible work training women to run for office. As congressional seats open up, Marylanders need to support women to replace male incumbents. Every currently serving congressman and senator should be challenged to throw their support behind female successors. Congressman David Trone has said he’d like to see a woman succeed him in the House — even as he campaigns against a strong, qualified woman for Senate.
Women have been the backbone of the Democratic party, serving in critical leadership roles, fundraising, calling, canvassing and doing the unglamorous work to elect men for too long. While many women’s groups and elected leaders don’t endorse in the primaries, they could still join grassroots activists and female political donors to support all of the female candidates.
It’s critical we support the women who are running now, fighting against history and facing steep odds — before another man wins another primary and we return another all-male delegation to D.C.
It’s unacceptable for women to be left out of the national conversation. When many women have lost the right to bodily autonomy, gun violence is the number one cause of death for our children, and an entire political party takes policy notes from a misogynistic former president, there’s no more room for women on the sidelines, where too many of us have been content to stand for too long.
The Elect Democratic Women political action committee says, “Congress cannot and will not address the urgent needs facing women and their families by a Congress where less than one in five representatives are women.” Clearly, they haven’t. Right now, when zero of Maryland’s congressional representatives are women and there are four open seats, we have a rare opportunity for change.
If the future is female, it’s not going to get there on its own. We have to volunteer, donate, register young women voters and support female candidates now, so women have a seat at the table — and are off the menu.