Pa. primaries set record for women candidates
147 are running for state Legislature
Stephanie Walsh volunteered with her daughters in the 2016 election on behalf of the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. She had worked in public policy for decades but had never seriously considered running for office. When Ms. Clinton lost, that changed.
“In the wake of the election, I heard the call to serve,” said Ms. Walsh, 48, of Highland Park.
Ms. Walsh, a Democrat, now is running for the state Senate seat in the 38th District, which covers much of northern Allegheny County and is currently held by Republican Randy Vulakovich of Shaler.
Ms. Walsh is one of 147 women running for the state Legislature this year, a huge increase over previous years. Driven to action by opposition to President Donald Trump, inspired by the women’s marches and the Me Too movement against sexual violence in the workplace, or just reacting to a feeling that it’s a favorable environment for female candidacy, women in both parties have filed as candidates in primary elections.
More women are running in both parties than in any previous election, particularly in the state Senate, according to primary election data collected back to 2000 by the OpenElections Project; 2018 numbers from Chatham University’s Pennsylvania Center for Women and Politics; and an analysis by the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Never before had there been even 100 candidates.
Candidacies are still heavily skewed toward men, but women are approaching 1 in 3 this year, rather than the typical 1 in 5. Pennsylvania, with 19 percent of state Legislature seats held by women, rreapnrkess3e9ntthatiinonte,ramccsoorfdfienmgatloe the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Seven of Pennsylvania’s 50 state senators are women, but 40 percent of the candidates this year are women seeking the 25 seats up for election.
Also, more than 20 PennfsoyrlvCaonniagrweossm; ethneasrteartue’nsnciunrgrent delegation is all men. No women hold statewide elected office at the moment.
Jennie Sweet-Cushman, a researcher at Chatham, said there are two important reasons to elect women.
“First, just from a fairness perspective, if your population is 52 percent women, that it would be so disproportionately represented by men, it doesn’t feel right.”
And, she continued, “More practically speaking, research shows a host of tthioinn.gsWcoommeenfrborminghamvoinrge more equitable representatransparency to the work that they do, and this is generalizable regardless of party. They tend to provide better constituent service, sponsor more legislation, and are more likely to pay attention to women’s issues.”
Women also tend to get more co-sponsors on their legislation and to work more often across party lines, she added.
“The response to the 2016 campaign with the Women’s March has energized women, particularly Democratic women,” Ms. SweetCushman said. “Women’s leadership is seen almost as a sort of counterpoint to the Trump administration.”
The data show that Democrats make up the bulk of the wave — 102 of the 147 candidates. But the number of Republican candidates also has increased, with 45 women running this year compared with 34 in 2016.
Ms. Sweet-Cushman pointed out that historically in Pennsylvania, more Republican women have been elected than Democrats, and the current group of female legislators is slightly weighted toward Republicans, 25 to 23. “Democrats are playing catch-up,” she said.
Ms. Sweet-Cushman also pointed out that the women running this year are stronger candidates than usual.
“We’re seeing more women who we know have campaign training and more women who we know have party support, running in cmuomrebesntrtsa,tewgihcerreaacsesi,nwtihthe open seats or vulnerable inpast when women would run, we would see more women who were likely to be a sacrificial lamb.”
Michele Knoll fits that bill. The Democrat is running for the state House seat in the 44th District held by retiring Rep. Mark Mustio, R-North Fayette.
She said she was encouraged to run and has been helped in the process by current state Rep. Dan Frankel, DSquirrel Hill. Ms. Knoll received candidate training from Chatham’s Ready to Run program, which is open to hopefuls from both parties, and the national group Emerge, which trains only Democrats.
State Sen. Kim Ward, a Republican who represents sections of Westmoreland County, said part of the advantage the state Republican Party has had with recruiting women is such training programs.
She specifically mentioned one run by Christine Toretti, a National Republican Committee member from Indiana, Pa. She founded the Anne Anstine Excellence in Public Service Series, a program designed to educate, empower and advance Republican women, according to the organization’s website.
Ms. Ward told an anecdote from her time on the Westmoreland County Board of Commissioners to illustrate the value of having women in government.
“My first meeting, I’m in a meeting with two men. One phoapspainveginouptoopfphinisg foourteohfehadis, neck, the other has a vein and they’re just going into each other. I was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, whoa.’
“The more diversity the better when it comes to our government,” she said.
More female candidates does not translate directly into more female legislators, but state Sen. Camera Bartolotta, a Republican who represents Greene and parts of Beaver and Washington counties, said, “I don’t think it’s necessarily an issue of women not getting elected, I think it’s women not running at the same level men do.
“What I have discovered is that women are way more careful,” she said. “Whereas men are just like, ‘Yeah, all right, I’ll run.’”
Ms. Bartolotta raised an issue that she called a double standard that men never face: “I’ve never heard anyone say to a man, ‘Well, why are you running if you have small children at home?’ but they’ll say that to women.”
That atmosphere seems to be changing, though.
“When I knocked on doors for petitions, a lot of people thought, as I do, that we need more women in the Legislature,” Ms. Knoll said. “It’s not been a woman’s world, and we’re stepping into an arena that has not always been friendly in the past, but I think we’re getting a very positive reaction.”