Pa. parties bypass women in special election picks

Saccone, Lamb to face off for 18th district seat

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Whatever happens in the March 13 special election for the 18th Congressional District, this much is certain: When the dust clears, there still won’t be a woman representing Pennsylvania in Washington. As they picked their nominees over the past two weekends, Republicans and Democrats alike bypassed female candidates.

Dana Brown, who heads Chatham University’s Pennsylvania Center for Women and Politics, professed herself “disappointed and surprised” by the resulting match-up. After all, she said, female candidates swept seven statewide judicial seats in the November election, and allegations of sexual misconduct by men have rocked the world of politics, media and entertainment. The 18th District seat, itself, was vacated by Tim Murphy, who stepped down in October amid allegations he mistreated staff and had an extramarital affair.

“You’d expect the party system to take note of all of that,” she said. “It speaks to the difficulty of how people confuse gender with leadership.”

Republicans passed on state Sen. Kim Ward, in her third term representing Westmoreland County, who finished third behind firstterm Sen. Guy Reschenthaler and the eventual nominee, state Rep. Rick Saccone.

“I’ve always known I had to fight just a little harder” as a woman, Ms. Ward said. “But I never felt I was at the mercy of anyone. But in this process, you had four male county chairmen picking the conferees,” who actually made the selection. Nearly 60 percent of the more than 200 conferees were male.

While Ms. Ward wouldn’t say sexism was at work, she said that “it’s a bad process, and a primary is a much better avenue because voters get to choose.”