Women candidates seek ‘A Place at the Table’
Five congressional candidates speak at Bryn Mawr College panel
LOWER MERION >> Two years before the 100th anniversary of when women won the right to vote, a large bump in the number of women running for office has pundits calling 2018 “The Year of the Woman.”
Five women who’ve thrown their hat in the ring for Congress in Pennsylvania, which currently has no female senators or representatives in Washington, spoke at a Sept. 27 panel discussion at Bryn Mawr College called “A Seat at the Table.”
Looming over the evening was the charged Senate judiciary hearing that day, when accuser Christine Blasey Ford, a California psy-
chology professor, testified and Supreme Court nominee Judge Brett Kavanaugh defended himself against her allegations.
Rutgers Professor Kelly Dittmar, Ph.D., co-author of a book with the same title as the discussion, moderated.
Dittmar, a scholar with the Center for Women and Politics at Rutgers, said that she spends a lot of time talking about the importance of “increasing women’s political representation and power.” It takes a lot of courage to run, along with financial and personal costs, she said, thanking the panelists for running.
Women make up 23 percent of the U.S. Congress and six of 50 state governors, yet comprise more than 50 percent of the population. Pennsylvania has never had a woman governor, and voters here have only sent seven women to Congress, she said. The commonwealth ranks 39th in the country for women in the state legislatures with only 19.4 percent women now, Dittmar said.
However, this year, 20 women ran for the U.S. House in the primaries, and eight are on the ballot. While women nationwide broke records this year in running for elected office, there are many more Democratic women at 43 percent of nominees and only 13 percent of the nominees on the Republican side.
Both 5th District candidates, Democrat Mary Gay Scanlon and Republican Pearl Kim, attended. Ironically, they are running after U.S. Rep. Pat Meehan stepped down amid a sexual harassment scandal.
“It really is a call to action, both to have more women at the table but for the men to do a better job because they’re just not cutting it,” said Scanlon, a public interest lawyer and member of the Wallingford Swarthmore School Board.
Kim, a Bryn Mawr alumna, received a warm welcome from the students. A former special victims prosecutor for Delaware County, she also prosecuted and won the first human trafficking conviction under a new state law. Kim worked for the state Attorney General’s Office and led the campus safety initiative and is the survivor of a campus sexual assault herself. A bout with cancer motivated her to try to “effectuate greater change,” and to do that she needed to work at the federal level, she said. When the congressional seat unexpectedly opened up, she jumped.
“I put in my life savings,” said Kim. “I am un-bossed. I am unbought. I am here to serve. I was a fierce advocate for the victims, and I will be a fierce advocate for you in Washington.”
Chrissy Houlahan, a Democrat running for the 6th District in Chester and Berks counties, a business person who had served in the Air Force and also worked for Teach for America and ran a literacy nonprofit, called the election of President Trump “a very dark day, similar to today, for me and my family.”
Bibiana Boerio, a Democrat running for the 14th District in the southwestern corner of the state, was a former Ford executive and chief of staff for former U.S. Rep. Joe Sestak.
“I’m running because I couldn’t stand and sit and watch what was going on,” she said. She was always told, “If you see a problem, jump in and fix it.” Her district is older in demographics and infrastructure and also lagging behind the rest of the state in job creation, she said.
Madeleine Dean, a Democrat running for the 4th District in Montgomery County, was late due to flooded roads. Dean, a former Abington Township commissioner who served six years in the state legislature, said she wants to fight for families and against gun violence and the opioid crisis.
As for the challenges of running for Congress, Dean joked that those are “laundry, lack of sleep and missed time with family.”
Dittmar asked the candidates how they have been treated by voters, media and party leaders.
Scanlon said that she ran against most of the women running for Congress in the state this year in the primary and that race focused on issues. The interest of the media has been on women running, but she wants to concentrate on issues, not gender, she said.
“Certainly, when I am out on the campaign trail, voters are not focusing on my experience as a woman,” Scanlon said. “Voters want to know if I am going to protect Social Security, the Affordable Care Act, reproductive health rights and gun safety.
“So it’s a little frustrating some times that there is this intense focus on it being the Year of the Woman when there should be, perhaps, a greater focus on issues,” Scanlon said.
Houlahan said that access to capital is a challenge.
“Campaigns are very, very expensive, particularly in this very expensive media market,” she said. Also, “sometimes women themselves are the worst critics of women,” she said. She’ll be out talking to people and another woman will come up and whisper advice about her apparel, her hair or “wrinkles.”
“That’s frustrating,” she said. “It also is frustrating that guys running in the same place for the same thing can effectively show up in anything they want and be taken seriously.”
Boerio “spent 32 years in an industry that is pretty male, and I was usually the only woman present. So I tend not to focus on the gender issues,” she said. Women need to be “better prepared” and to “make fact-based statements, not opinion statements.”
“You learn not to cry,” said Boerio. “You learn to react and ask questions.”
She said that in her area, some men are reluctant to vote for women, but she is shaping her messages to the district’s issues. Men, for example, are concerned about government corruption, so she talks about that issue when she is before a group of men.
“I’m frustrated with Washington,” said Kim. “I’m frustrated with the rhetoric. I’m frustrated with the lack of civility and the partisan divide. I don’t understand why politicians cannot work across the aisle for the common good. … Certain things like combating sexual violence should not be partisan.”
Asked about experiences beyond their gender, Kim said she is a daughter of immigrants and would also be the first “woman of color” elected to Congress from Pennsylvania.
Boerio said as Sestak’s former chief of staff, she would be able to “hit the job running.” Houlahan touted her experience as a veteran and as a teacher in an urban area. Scanlon cited working with nonprofits and that she would be an advocate for low-income families.
As for running as a woman, Dean said, “I don’t know any other way to do it.”
Dean got into public service in her 50s, she said.
“We are all feeling the energy of women,” she said. All 18 congressmen representing Pennsylvania are men, she said. “This is a historic time. … We might get four, five, six women across the finish line in a single cycle.” And people tell Dean having a woman run is “long overdue.”
Scanlon said that as a lawyer, she has worked in a male-dominated profession where clients have sometimes assumed that she was a secretary, but she also learned to speak up. She was “irked” that men would be called by their last names but women by their first names and is using her last name to brand her campaign.
Answering a question from the audience about whether it is hard to run as a Republican in Delaware County and Philadelphia, Kim said, “It’s clearly a difficult climate to be running in. I’m a Republican. I’m a fiscal conservative. I believe in smaller government. But I’m from southeastern Pennsylvania. I was born in Philadelphia. … I know the temperature of the area. It’s not like the national Republican Party is helping me. So I’m here to advocate for the people of this district.”
Scanlon said that she’s seen a lot of frustration among voters. There is “a very strong sense that people want their government to work. They’re tired of games where it’s all about the zero-sum gamesmanship that you win I lose, as opposed to people working together on solutions.”
“I’m frustrated with Washington,” said Kim. “I’m frustrated with the rhetoric. I’m frustrated with the lack of civility and the partisan divide. I don’t understand why politicians cannot work across the aisle for the common good. … Certain things like combating sexual violence should not be partisan.” — 5th District Candidate Republican Pearl Kim