Women in GOP slower to enter politics

WASHINGTON — The president of Emily’s List rose to the podium at a recent New York fundraiser to make a proud announcement: More than 18,000 women had contacted the group since election day, looking to explore running for office — “an explosion,” she called it.

Of course, they’re all Democrats. On the Republican side, there’s been no such explosion. While a tide of anti-Trump activism has led thousands of Democratic women to consider runs for office, their GOP counterparts are where they were before the 2016 election, with little chance of improving their representation.

“Republican women look very much the same now as they did pre-Trump,” says Jennifer Lawless, professor at American University and coauthor of a recent report on the gender gap in political ambition, on both sides of the aisle. “They’re generally not interested in running for office, the overwhelming majority has not been recruited to run, they don’t think they’re qualified to run, and their levels of political activity and enthusiasm are the same as they have always been.”

Lawless’ report, called “The Trump Effect,” also throws some cold water on the expectation that Democrats will see a seismic shift in the number of women running; reenergized political activism doesn’t necessarily translate into candidacies. But the new enthusiasm has been almost entirely on the left side of the spectrum, and some groups are trying to address that.

Erin Loos Cutraro, chief executive of the nonpartisan group She Should Run, says although the overall pace of adding women to elected office is too slow — with women making up under 20% of Congress — it’s clearly happening faster for Democrats.

Part of the problem: uneven resources and support. “Feeling that you’re not going at it alone makes a big difference,” Cutraro says, “and it can feel really isolating for Republican women. They don’t have the same networks, just in sheer numbers ... or the same level of institutional support. If you’re a Democratic pro-choice woman, and you have Emily’s List there to support you, that can be incredibly powerful. Republican women don’t have anything that plays at the same level.”

While a group like Emily’s List lends concrete support to get a candidate over the finish line, She Should Run serves women seeking that first step. “‘I don’t even know where to start’ is something we hear over and over,” Cutraro says.

Rebecca Love is one of those women. A longtime Republican, she woke up at home in San Diego the morning after election day wanting to get involved somehow.

“I felt that my values as a Republican woman were not represented by the candidate who was elected,” says Love, who works in healthcare consulting. “I felt Republicans were better than this. It was a wake-up call.”

So Love, 38, began Googling programs for women interested in politics. Most, she found, were for Democrats — and her experience had been that even nonpartisan groups were populated mostly by Democrats, some not eager to engage with Republicans. Finally, Love, who identifies as a pro-abortion-rights, moderate Republican, started working with She Should Run. She’s learning the political landscape of her community, and expects to pursue a City Council seat or something similar.

By now, Love says, she feels confident enough that she doesn’t need to be “asked” to run. But she meets women who do: “I say to them, ‘You should think about running,’ and they say, ‘Me?’ ”

Virtually any advocate working to get women into politics will say the same thing: More than men, women need to be asked to run.

Julie Conway of VIEW PAC, which works to get GOP women elected to federal office, says: “You have to tell women, ‘Hey, you’d be great, and not only that, but you’d be the best, and now I’m going to have 10 other people tell you you’re the best.’ Guys just say, ‘Hey, I could do this.’ ”

It’s a bipartisan issue, she says: “Women — Democratic or Republican — need to be convinced that they know everything about everything. Because they don’t want to fake it. Guys, you ask them about a question about a specific tax issue, and they say, ‘Oh, we believe in lower taxes.’ A woman will say, ‘I need the exact details of how that works.’ ”

Adds Stephanie Schriock, president of Emily’s List: “For years we’ve sat at kitchen tables, we’ve said, ‘You can do this; you don’t need five years of training — that dude has no training!’ ”

For Jinyoung Englund, getting asked by a former boss was a turning point. A daughter of Korean immigrants in Washington state, she got the bug for public service early, working on a congressional campaign and then on Capitol Hill in her 20s.

She hadn’t planned to run herself, and her first response, she says, was that it sounded “kinda crazy .... Women like myself are often, ‘Hey, who am I to think I could run?’ ”

But at 33, she is now the GOP candidate in a special legislative election; Republican control of the state Senate hangs in the balance.

Not every woman, of course, needs to be asked. Shantel Krebs, South Dakota secretary of state and candidate for Congress, served 10 years in the state Legislature — she was 30 when first elected in 2004. Krebs says she hasn’t encountered the obstacles some other women describe, perhaps because South Dakota has a long history of women in politics. The incumbent in the seat she’s seeking, fellow Republican Kristi Noem, is running for governor.

“I think South Dakotans expect another woman in that position,” says Krebs, 44. “They know that women compromise and they listen.”

Like male Republican candidates, GOP women must consider where they stand on President Trump, their party’s polarizing leader. Depending on the district, it’s not always easy.

“Some candidates find themselves in a no-win situation, and it’s not a great place to be,” says VIEW PAC’s Conway. “I’m not seeing a lot of candidates come through saying Trump’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. But I also haven’t met a lot of people running who are overly willing to speak against him either.”

‘Women like myself are often, “Hey, who am I to think I could run?” ’

—Jinyoung Englund, Republican candidate for Washington state Senate