Women blaze new trails
Record class of female lawmakers; nine win gubernatorial races
WASHINGTON – First they marched. Then they ran. Now they’ve won.
The massive movement that began with resistance to Donald Trump’s presidency has helped drive historic gains for female candidates this election cycle, ushering more female lawmakers into the next session of Congress than ever before.
As of Wednesday, women had sur- passed the current record of 107 voting members of the House and Senate, according to a USA TODAY analysis of election results.
The new total – 118 and counting – includes 31 firsttime House members, seven more than the record set for freshmen women during the 1992 “Year of the Woman” election. It also includes sitting female senators who were not up for reelection.
The House will also have the largest number of freshmen women of color next Congress, with at least 11 new members elected, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “This is a story about women across the racial spectrum challenging the establishment and the norms and the expectations of what’s possible,” said Brenda Choresi Carter, director of the Reflective Democracy Campaign.
The surge was driven largely by Democrats, who took over control of the House. Eighty-four of the 96 women elected to the House are Democrats, including 30 of the 31 newcomers.
Their historic involvement follows the massive Women’s March to resist Trump’s presidency and the #MeToo movements’ protest against sexual misconduct in the workplace.
For those seeking gender parity in Congress, the lopsided partisan outcome is discouraging.
“While women made important gains this cycle, I am disheartened by the growing disparity between the representation of Republican and Democratic women in Congress,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Rutgers center. “Without the full participation of women on both sides of the aisle it will be impossible to achieve gender parity in Congress.”
In CNN exit polls, almost 80 percent of voters said it was very or somewhat important to see more women elected. That was a higher priority for women than for men, but not by much, CNN said.
Twelve women – including two freshmen – have been elected to the Senate so far, and there will be one more when the U.S. Senate race between two women candidates is settled in Arizona. Ten of the female senators are Democrats.
Nine women (six Democrats and three Republicans) were elected in governors races, matching a record set in 2004, and that number could rise.
Women from both parties ran in greater numbers this cycle, but the number of Democratic female candidates still outpaced Republicans at every level, from state legislatures to governor’s races to Congress. Gender parity in Congress won’t be possible if the GOP doesn’t field and support more candidates, Carter said.
The candidates they fielded this year “really kind of doubled down on being the party of white men,” and Republican women will have to hold them accountable if they want it to change, she said.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., told reporters on Wednesday that the issue has “been a frustration” and that Republicans need to do a better job at recruiting and supporting women candidates.
He lamented having “tried and failed the last couple of Congresses” to persuade one Republican woman to serve on the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“We’ve had plenty of women candidates. A lot of them don’t win,” he said.
On the Democratic side, the Trump effect is hard to ignore as a motivating factor for women running. While the Women’s March drew millions of protesters at events nationwide on the first full day of Trump’s administration, tens of thousands of women reached out to just one organization – Emily’s List – to express interest in running for office since Election Day 2016. The organization, which helps elect pro-choice Democratic women, trained a record 5,000 women to run this cycle, alone.
But there were other factors at play in addition to Trump’s election.
Women, and particularly women of color, have been putting pressure for a while on the Democratic Party to support their candidacies. Part of the surge is a response to that, Carter said.
Other women bucked the party establishment – and showed they can win anyway. Among them are Boston City Councilor Ayanna Pressley, a Democrat who is the first black woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts, and New York Democratic activist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who at 29 became the youngest woman elected to Congress.
Ocasio-Cortez scored the primary season’s biggest upset with the defeat of Rep. Joe Crowley, the fourth-ranking House Democrat.
“We didn’t launch this campaign because I thought I was special or unique or better than anyone else,” Ocasio-Cortez said after winning on Tuesday night. “We launched this campaign because in the absence of anyone giving a clear voice on the moral issues of our time, then it is up to us to voice them.”
Here are the winners in some of the barrier-breaking races for women:
U.S. House of Representatives
Sharice Davids and Deb Haaland: Will become the first Native American congresswomen. Davids, a member of the Ho-Chunk Nation, is Kansas’ first LGBTQ member of Congress. Haaland is a New Mexico Democrat and member of the Pueblo of Laguna tribe. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Abby Finkenauer: Became the youngest women elected to Congress. Both are 29, although Finkenauer is more than nine
months older than Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat and activist. Finkenauer, a Democrat, also became Iowa’s first U.S. congresswoman.
Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib: Will be the first Muslim women in Congress. Omar, a Democratic Minnesota state representative who was already the nation’s first Somali-American legislator, also became the state’s first woman of color elected to Congress. Tlaib, a former state legislator who is also a Democrat, had no Republican opponent in Michigan’s 13th Congressional District, which includes parts of Detroit.
Jahana Hayes: Became Connecticut’s first black woman – along with the state’s first black Democrat – elected to Congress. Hayes is a political newcomer who was the 2016 National Teacher of the Year. Ayanna Pressley: Became the first black woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts. The Boston City Councilor is a Democrat who ran unopposed in the general election.
Angie Craig: Will be Minnesota’s first openly LGBTQ member of Congress. Craig, a Democrat, is a former medical device executive. Veronica Escobar and Sylvia Garcia: Both Democrats became the first Latinas to represent Texas in the House.
Senate
Marsha Blackburn: Will be Tennessee’s first female senator. A Republican U.S. representative, Blackburn is Tennessee’s first Republican woman nominated for U.S. Senate and the state’s first woman in 40 years to be nominated by a major party for the U.S. Senate.
Governors
Michelle Lujan Grisham: Will be the first Democratic woman of color governor in the country. Lujan Grisham is a U.S. representative from New Mexico who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Kristi Noem: Will be South Dakota’s first female governor. Noem, a Republican, has served as the state’s at-large representative in the House since 2011. Contributing: John Kelly, Chrissie Thompson, Maureen Groppe