Running for the position of lieutenant governor as a female

The women running for lieutenant governor — the state’s second highest office, one breath away from the governor’s seat and the tie-breaking vote in the senate — have heard it all. Even in Connecticut, even in 2018, even in the midst of the Me Too movement.

Shortly after she announced her campaign for lieutenant governor in February, Darien First Selectman Jayme Stevenson, 56, was on the campaign trail alongside more than a dozen Republican men running for governor. She spoke about serious issues — the opioid and drug crisis, which has touched her personally, and the state’s growing fiscal problems — and the experience she believes qualifies her to deal with these issues as lieutenant governor.

A male candidate for governor who is no longer in the race approached her after a forum.

“You know, you’d do a lot better if you smile more,” he advised her.

“I looked at him and I said, ‘Would you say that to a man?’ These are serious issues we’re talking about,” Stevenson recalled recently. “Why would I smile about the state budget crisis?”

Stevenson declined to name the candidate, but his comment inspired her campaign logo: a bright yellow smiley face. She proudly wears the button on her purse and hands them out to people she meets, a silent protest against the countless men who have said similar things since she started campaigning.

But the criticism female candidates receive isn’t only coming from men. Women are just as guilty of perpetuating the sexist ideas of how female candidates should look or act on the campaign trail, said Eva Bermudez Zimmerman, a Democrat running for lieutenant governor, and New Britain Mayor Erin Stewart, a Republican running for the same seat.

Bermudez Zimmerman and Stewart are both 31, and said the sexism directed at them often also has to do with their age.

Stewart arrived for an interview at the Stamford Advocate office on the same day as Alive at Five, a music festival known for attracting droves of young people to downtown Stamford. The festival is next door, she was told by the female attendant, you can’t park here. Stewart, who was wearing a bright yellow sundress with young female staffers in tow, took it in stride.

For the candidate whose cheery giggle elicits criticism for “not being serious enough,” this was a minor incident.

She knows she doesn’t look the way a “candidate” is supposed to look, especially not a Republican.

“She was drawing the assumption that we’re not supposed to be parking here based on the way I look,” Stewart said. “I don’t have a bouffant hairstyle, I’m not wearing a shirt that’s buttoned up to my neck. There are some people that think that simply because of the way I look doesn’t make me a political figure. It’s frustrating and you have to work twice as hard, there’s no doubt about it, to overcome these silly nuances.”

Like Stewart, Bermudez Zimmerman often receives unsolicited advice about her wardrobe, mostly from other women.

“I like to be fashion forward, and attire is one of the ways that I express myself,” said Bermudez Zimmerman, who, for the record, is usually sporting a blazer and dress pants or a skirt. “I just never thought that would be a factor.”

The top problem she has faced, though, comes from well-intentioned men, she said. Men who have worked in politics and on campaigns, who are just trying to help but end up explaining a point she has already made. The campaign aide that, during the state Democratic convention, tried to explain away a comment she’d made to reporters about feeling like her support was slipping. “She doesn’t know she’s not supposed to say that,” he suggested.

“I think it is because I’m a female, and it’s also because of my age,” she said. “They’re just trying to be protective, and their energy is coming from the right place. But I’m running for this position because I’m knowledgeable and I’m qualified.”

Susan Bysiewicz, the party endorsed Democratic candidate for governor, has more campaign experience than the other three women combined. After 30 years, her encounters with sexism on the campaign trail are routine at this point. But as the daughter of Connecticut’s first tenured female law professor, Bysiewicz knows what it means to be a strong woman. In an effort to empower other women to run for office, she even started a scholarship at the Women’s Campaign School at Yale.

“My daughter was 5 months old when I announced I was running for the first time,” Bysiewicz said. “We had a picture of my husband and I and my daughter on my card. I knocked on a door, and a gentleman answered, and he looked at my law card, and said, ‘You should be home taking care of your baby.’ There can be a double standard but I have come to realize — and I still think there are challenges — but people like voting for competent women candidates.”