2018 may not be the year for this Republican woman
Representative fighting her closest race yet
SPOKANE, Wash. – Billboards of women, declaring: “Cathy represents ME.” Television ads about being a working mom. The same theme in literature for door-to-door campaigning, featuring a family photo on the back and a photo of nearly 40 women inside.
It’s clear U.S. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers understands her target audience in her battle to hold her seat in Congress. Some are calling 2018 the “year of the woman.” Yet McMorris Rodgers, the highest-ranking GOP woman in Congress, faces a tight race for re-election. Her challenger? Another woman, of course.
McMorris Rodgers, 49, of Spokane, chairs the House Republican Conference and has represented eastern Washington state for 14 years. This year, she faces 62-year-old Lisa Brown, the former top Democrat in the state Senate, who recently served as chancellor of Washington State University’s Spokane campus. As a Democrat, Brown is better positioned to take advantage of a renewed women’s movement that emerged in response to President Donald Trump’s election in 2016.
More women, on both sides: McMorris Rodgers refuses to cede ground with women voters. Being a working mom is part of her brand: She is the only member of Congress to have given birth three times while in office, to Cole, Grace and Brynn.
Brown also is a working mom. Her son, Lucas Brookbank Brown, is 26 now, but she featured his childhood in one of her first television ads. She brought him to the Legislature for a late vote, she explains in the commercial, but was told children were not allowed.
In all, a record number of women filed to run for Congress this year. More than 260 are still in the running – 202 of them Democrats, according to the Center for American Women and Politics.
In a meeting this month with veterans at Washington State University, McMorris Rodgers reacted with a mom’s instincts to meeting a veteran whose brothers were all Marines, too.
Working mom is an effective brand, GOP Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel said. “It’s important that our Congress represents the people of this country, and there are a lot of moms out there,” McDaniel told USA TODAY.
Brown agrees McMorris Rodgers is more than a mom, but she disagrees with Republican policies.
They differ on President Barack Obama’s health care law. But both are concerned about the cutback in hours at Veterans Affairs emergency rooms – a prominent issue in a region whose top employer is Fairchild Air Force Base, outside Spokane.