More female candidates run than usual, but still not many
Men have called Carrie Blumert “princess” and “honey.” They have commented on her body, invited her inside their homes and even grabbed her hand to check for a wedding ring.
Blumert, 31, has been campaigning for an Oklahoma County commissioner seat for more than a year, and she said sexism and harassment have become common occurrences for her. She now understands why many women don’t want to run for office.
"It gets exhausting when the fourth time in a week, you have some man say something really inappropriate to you,” Blumert said. “And it starts feeling like, do you even care if I’m smart? Do you even care if I’m a good leader or if I’m really working hard?
“It seems like you just care whether or not I’m married and what I look like.”
Although a woman has occupied the most powerful office in the state since 2010, women are still a fairly rare sighting on the doorsteps of Oklahoma voters.
Those who thought Oklahoma had taken a big step forward when Mary Fallin was elected weren’t on the porch with state Sen. Kay Floyd when a man told her, “You know, we’ve got a woman governor. Isn’t that enough?”
The number of women running for Oklahoma’s Legislature has nearly tripled since four years ago, but they still only make up 29 percent of the candidates.
Fewer than one in seven state
legislators is female, which is 14 percent.
But Fallin, 63, who is close to finishing her second term, sees her achievement as real progress.
“I still get a lot of attention for being Oklahoma’s first female governor, and I’m proud of that accomplishment,” Fallin told The Oklahoman. “But what people sometimes forget is I ran against another woman. That was a historic race, and I think it shows how far we’ve come as a state.”
Historically, male candidates have been elected at a higher rate than female candidates in Oklahoma. Two years ago, 16 percent of the women who ran for the state Legislature were elected, while 26 percent of the men were.
But with more women running this year — Tuesday is the state primary election — the chances are greater for more women in the Legislature.
A turning point
Floyd, 60, one of Oklahoma’s seven female state senators in the 48-member Senate, is running unopposed. She will be the Senate Democratic leader in 2019, Oklahoma's first female Senate caucus leader.
“I think that the elected officials should be representative of their districts and of the state,” Floyd said. “And our state is 52 percent women ... That percentage of representation at the (state) Capitol is not reflective of the percentage of women in our state, and I would love to see it 50-50.”
Anna Langthorn, chair of the Oklahoma Democratic Party, said women are not normally quick to run for office because they do not view themselves as leaders. She said this is not surprising given the images women are shown in the media.
“We see business leaders, elected leaders and leaders in general as men,” Langthorn said.
The 2016 presidential election was a “turning point” for many people, forcing them to examine their role in democracy and consider running, she said.
“Particularly in Oklahoma, some of that spike had to do with the budget crisis and the teacher walkout,” Langthorn said.
Melanie Spoon, 42, a teacher running for the state House in District 81, said she has always wanted to run for office, but the teacher walkout was the final push. She said she thinks educators can best fix Oklahoma’s education system.
Teachers running
Pam Pollard, chair of the Oklahoma Republican party, said she thinks many teachers made “spur of the moment” decisions to file for office in wake of the teacher walkout. She said some filed for “the principle of the matter.”
“That's OK because it's part of the process,” Pollard said. “When you file for office, you're saying two things. You're saying, ‘I want to represent my district,’ but it also says that ‘I don't like what I see there right now.’"
It cost $500 to file for state House and $750 to file for state Senate this year, according to the state election board’s website. Spoon said this is “a lot of money” for a public school teacher, and she and others filed for more than “principle.”
“I think they filed because they want to get in there, roll up their sleeves, pull up their boot straps and get to work and find a way to fix this state," said Spoon, a Republican.
Alyssa Fisher, programs manager of Sally’s List, said it’s harder to convince women to run because it seems like a foreign idea to them. Sally’s List is a nonpartisan, Oklahoma City-based organization that recruits progressive women and helps them get elected. Blumert is a current Sally's List candidate, and Floyd was, in her first race.
Fisher said it is important to elect more women because women in politics have been shown to work more effectively across party lines, bring new perspectives and make the legislature more representative of the population.
Family responsibilities
Women often have more difficulty fundraising than men, and some of Sally’s List’s candidates have been told while campaigning that a woman will never win in their district, Fisher said. Female candidates still face age-old barriers, including a mindset that their role is elsewhere, like in the home.
Fallin said family responsibilities can be a “significant factor” that deters women from running for office, but women are multitaskers and successful in every field.
Fallin found out she was pregnant while on the campaign trail for state House in 1990. She said critics wondered what a woman running for office would do if she became pregnant.
“I told them exactly what I would do: have the baby and then keep working hard to win the election,” Fallin said. “That is just what I did.”
Blumert said she thinks the general public is not used to seeing a young woman run for office and it is still “kind of an anomaly to them.”
“I get a lot of questions like ‘Are you married?’, ‘Do you have children?’, ‘You look too young.’ ‘You look like a teenager,’” Blumert said. “... I don’t want to ever be rude, but I also want to make these men aware that the way they’re treating me is not acceptable.
“If we want more women in public office, we need to start treating them equally and fairly.”