Women line up to seek governorships
Voters have the chance to elect a record number of female governors this year, the result of big strides women have made in state-level politics combined with a remarkably large number of open gubernatorial seats. Advocates hope to see the number of women governors rise from five now to as many as 10. At least 18 women from the major parties are now running, including a half-dozen who will face primary voters on Sept. 10 alone.
“It’s the emerging of women as executive leaders,” said Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster working on campaigns in Alaska and Arizona. “It’s really been 10 years in the process, of women being in office, building their resumes.”
So far, women have won major-party nominations in Arkansas, Kansas and Michigan, and strong candidates are running in Alaska, Arizona, Maryland and more. In Hawaii, both parties’ front-runners are women. Three of the five sitting women governors aren’t seeking re-election.
Political scientists say there have been more candidates before – some 34 women filed as major-party gubernatorial candidates in 1994 – but this year there are more experienced candidates with a real chance to win. Many other women are running as independents or third-party candidates.
Already, some women have had notable success. Jennifer Granholm, Michigan’s attorney general, defeated two well-known male politicians for that state’s Democratic gubernatorial nomination. Linda Lingle, the former mayor of Maui, is leading the polls for a shot to be the first female governor of Hawaii and the first Republican since 1962.
Two candidates already have national names – Janet Reno, seeking the Democratic nomination to challenge Florida Gov. Jeb Bush; and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Maryland’s lieutenant governor.
“It’s important to remember that for all of these women, it didn’t happen in a year,” said Deborah Walsh, director of the Center for the American Woman and Politics at Rutgers University. “It took 30 years of running and winning and losing to get to this point.”
Also, Walsh points out, with 36 governors’ seats up for election – 17 of them open – if a large number of women didn’t run, it would be a real blow as women make progress in gaining other state offices.
In 1971, for instance, 324 of the nation’s state legislators, or 4.5 percent, were women. Last year, women held 1,680 seats, or 22.6 percent.
Women say they still get tougher scrutiny than men – about their family, and their stance on crime – but they’re gaining in the push for equality.
“I certainly get questions about my children, questions my opponents would never get. I’m not complaining about that,” said Granholm, a former federal prosecutor. “Everyone’s raised with certain images of women. It takes a long time to rewrite the script.”
Women candidates note they have advantages over men on some issues. For example, the corporate finance and responsibility scandals play to their strengths, they said.
Lengthy resumes also help answer doubts about women candidates.
Kathleen Sebelius, the Democratic nominee in Kansas, spent seven years as insurance commissioner and eight years in the state Legislature. Arizona’s Democratic front-runner, Janet Napolitano, spent five years as the state’s U.S. attorney and four years as state attorney general.
“We’ve come of age,” said state Sen. Bev Hollingworth, a candidate for New Hampshire’s Democratic nomination.
Besides Lingle in Hawaii, all of the candidates with the best chance to win are Democrats. So far, six GOP candidates have lost bids for their party’s nomination.
“Every woman candidate would say that they certainly want people to vote for her because she’s the best candidate and not because of her gender,” Granholm said.
Candidates on both sides of the aisle also want to shift the attitudes of other women.
“My hope is it changes the willingness of women to participate in politics,” said Lingle, in Hawaii. “Too many women are turned off by politics because they think it’s dirty and back room.”
Some women’s activists hope that winning more gubernatorial races will lead to the return of a woman on a national ticket; it’s been 18 years since Geraldine Ferraro’s historic run for the vice presidency.
But Walsh, at Rutgers, tempers high expectations. There’s still a long way to go, she said.
“I get very nervous when we start to proclaim all these years as “years of the women,”‘ she said. “We set up some notion that we’ll solve the problem of women’s under-representation in politics in a single year.”
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On the Net:
Center for the American Woman and Politics: http://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/