In 2004, 39 individuals were newly elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. Eight of these individuals were women. Women went on to win two special elections held in 2005, while a man won the third contest. This increase in the numerical representation of women in the lower house of Congress in 2004–5 was a positive counter to the lack of progress women made in advancing their numbers in other elective offices, such as the U.S. Senate, governorships, and state legislatures in 2004. These gains in representation, however, only amounted to a 15.5% membership for women in the U.S. House of Representatives. Who were these successful women, and what does their election suggest to us about women and political officeholding and about gender as a factor when men and women run for public office in the early years of the twenty-first century? Do their campaigns and election reflect the continued relevance of gender, or are they indications of the demise of gender as a factor in elections?
What happens when we turn our attention to a woman being elected president? In 1995, Irwin Gertzog, long-time chronicler of the women who have served in the U.S. House, noted the emergence “in the United States of women who are strategic politicians—experienced, highly motivated, career public servants who carefully calculate the personal and political benefits of running for higher office, assess the probability of their winning, and determine the personal and political costs of defeat before deciding to risk the positions they hold to secure a more valued office” (1995, 4). If this description characterizes the elections of women in contemporary politics, then we might expect gender to be fading as a prominent influence on contests for national office and, by extension, for local office.
Do the women who were successful in 2004 reflect this trend toward women being strategic politicians similar to men? These eight women included a former member, Cynthia McKinney (D-GA), who had been ousted from her seat in the Democratic primary in 2002, a former welfare mother and current state senator (Gwen Moore, D-WI), and the minority leader of the Washington state House of Representatives (Cathy McMorris, R-WA). Debbie Wasserman Schultz, another successful candidate, was the mother of three young children, 5-year-old twins and a one-year-old, when she won election to the House in 2004 in Florida's 20th Congressional District. The women who won represented a range of occupational backgrounds, from a former orchard worker (in a family business) to a former community college president and a technology consulting-firm president. They tended to raise over a million dollars for their election bids, with Pennsylvania state Senator Allyson Schwartz raising over $4.5 million.
The men who were newly elected in 2004 tended to be Republicans (21 of the 31), while the women were slightly more likely to be Democrats (five of the eight women). In the 2005 special elections for House seats won by women, one was won by a Democrat and one by a Republican. The women who won in 2004 ranged in age from 35 to 61, while their male counterparts ranged in age from 29 to 67. The average age of both the male and female newcomers, however, was the same, at 49 years of age. The traditional pattern of female public officials tending to be older than their male counterparts was nonexistent among those elected to the U.S. House in 2004. At the same time, the men tended to be lawyers (39% of them), a traditional background of elective officials, whereas none of the women had law degrees. In this regard, women contributed to the diversification of the U.S. House.
All but one of the women had at least a bachelor's degree, and they came from diverse career backgrounds.1
Their careers as listed in National Journal profiles were state legislative aide, educator, technology sales and consulting, owner of a nursery and landscaping company and college administrator, founder of a women's health clinic and deputy commissioner of the Philadelphia Human Rights Department, real estate agent, family produce business and legislative aide, and a housing and urban development specialist. See http://nationaljournal.com/members/campaign/2004/house.
Although these victorious women won contests throughout the country, none of their elections represented a geographical expansion of women's election to the Congress, that is, increasing the number of states that have elected a woman to national office. Four of the women were from the South, one from the Northeast, two from the Midwest2
Note that Gwen Moore was the first African-American woman elected from Wisconsin to the U.S. House of Representatives.
Most of the women had to win hard-fought primaries to become their party's nominee. There was little evidence from media stories that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee or the Republican National Congressional Committee had actively recruited any candidates in these races. The women appeared to have been self-starters. Another important factor in their races was that none of these women seem to have been viable contenders because they could self-finance their campaigns, an increasingly important factor in the parties' recruitment efforts.3
An exception was Debbie Wasserman Schultz, our 35-year-old mother of three youngsters. She was distinguished by the fact that she so dominated in the early days, following incumbent Peter Deutsch's decision to forgo running for reelection in Florida's 20th Congressional District to seek an open U.S. Senate seat, that she faced no opponent in the primary. She had raised so much early money that she was able to make a financial contribution to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a very unique happening. In the heavily Democratic district, she easily won the general election.
Does Gender Still Play a Role?
To what extent did gender play a role in the campaigns and elections of these women? Do their experiences suggest the demise of gender as a factor when men and women run for public office? How do we find gender, and where should we look for it in these elections and more generally? Gender refers to how actions are perceived when they are performed by men and when they are performed by women. Viewed from the long perspective of history, women's engagement in the public life of the nation has been unnatural. The second women's rights movement called for women to become political leaders, and groups within the movement have promoted the election of women to public office and called for equal representation. They have developed campaign training schools and established political action committees to help fund their campaigns. Women have made strides in moving in and moving up through elected positions within our government at both the state and national level, although their numerical representation remains woefully low. We need to ask whether something distinctive happens when a woman decides to run, compared to when a man runs in contemporary elections.
All of the newly elected female Democratic members of the U.S. House in 2004 had the advantage of having been endorsed by EMILY's List.4
EMILY's List is a political action and training group that funds female pro-choice Democratic candidates, and has become a formidable force in national elections. This is not to say that all of the candidates EMILY's List endorsed in 2004 won election. The group lost some major U.S. Senate races.
It did not appear to be the case that EMILY's List had recruited Senator Moore to run in the first instance. Note that Moore's run for the House opened up her state senate seat, for which a female state representative was encouraged to run and, in turn, opened up a state assembly seat for yet another woman.
The three female Republican winners all opposed abortion rights. Thus, none were endorsed by EMILY's List's counterpart in the Republican Party, the WISH List. Indeed, the WISH List had only one nonincumbent female candidate to endorse for national office in 2004.
Seven of the eight women won open seats. In the 8th Congressional District in Illinois, Melissa Bean, in her second attempt to oust longtime incumbent Philip Crane, was successful. She was one of only five challengers to beat an incumbent. Although all of these successful women came to win national office through the “political pipeline,” their campaign themes varied by party. Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz, for example, highlighted her policy victories in the Florida legislature concerning hospital stays for new mothers (the Drive Thru Baby Bill) and women undergoing breast cancer surgery (the Drive Thru Mastectomy Bill). At the same time, Republican Cathy McMorris highlighted her pro-business credentials and agricultural background as a farmer's daughter who worked in the family's orchard business; the theme of her campaign was “Proven Leadership for Eastern Washington.”
On the other hand, Thelma Drake in the 2nd District of Virginia, home of the Atlantic fleet mentioned earlier, with its heavy dependence on military spending and infrastructure, focused on being able to get a seat on the House Armed Services Committee if elected, in order to promote the economic interests of her constituency. On the campaign trail, she promoted the idea that U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert had committed to placing her on that committee if she were elected, a prize assignment for someone whose district takes in the world's largest naval base and a number of other military installations. She won the nomination of the Republican Party in the 2nd District when the incumbent withdrew late in the process. Her opponent was newcomer Democrat David Ashe, a lawyer and Marine reservist who had recently returned from a two-year tour in the Middle East, including six months in Iraq where he had worked on restoring the judicial system. Democrats highlighted his military credentials, including ads urging voters to “send a Marine to Congress.” One might have thought, on the basis of traditional gender stereotypes, that in this heavily military district Drake would have had difficulty countering Ashe's military credentials, but that did not happen. As noted in one of the district's major newspapers, what counted was the “R” word, Republican. “[T]here's the ‘R’ factor. The ‘Republican’ after Drake's name on the ballot could be the only qualification that matters, so strong is the allegiance to the GOP in Virginia Beach. Nomination practically guarantees election in what has become a one-party town.”6
“Alphabet Soup Heats Up 2nd District Contest,” Virginian-Pilot Norfolk, September 3, 2004, Final Edition.
No Gender Bias? No Gender at All?
To determine whether the presence and success of these women brought something distinctive to the election process and whether gender affected their campaigns and that of their opponents would require a much more systematic and in-depth analysis than the illustrations drawn here. Nonetheless, a perusal of media stories from the campaign trails of 2004 finds little in the way of gender bias or a focus on the sex of the candidates. Much analysis has shown that the presence of woman candidates has little effect on the outcome of contemporary elections. They raise the same kinds of money as male candidates (Burrell, 1994, 1998) and construct the same types of campaign organizations (Dabelko and Herrnson, 1997). They receive the same amount of help from their national political party organizations (Burrell 1994, Biersack and Herrnson, 1994); voters no longer seem to discriminate against them (Dolan, 2004); and they even engage in negative campaigning about as much as male candidates (Bystrom and Kaid, 2002). Thus, one might conclude not only that the phrase “when women run, women win” characterizes the election prospects of women candidates today but also that they are as equally professional and sophisticated on the campaign trail as men—and perhaps stumble in the same ways. Indeed, if it has become commonplace for women to be the strategic politicians that Gertzog has described, then gender may be fading, and as researchers we will have to look very hard to find differences when a woman runs and when a man runs.
This perspective on gender on the campaign trail and ideas about women as political candidates is not meant to imply, however, that women in public office do not make a difference. Research has shown that women in office and in political leadership positions do have different priorities, affect legislative agendas, influence the policymaking process, and have distinctive leadership styles. (See, particularly, the various chapters in Women Transforming Congress, edited by Cindy Simon Rosenthal, 2002). If we focus on the structure of elections, however, rather than starting from a gender perspective, it is likely that gender will not emerge as a significant explanatory factor today regarding who gets elected. It still affects, however, who runs.
Why Not in the United States?
Gender factors will not fade away from elections for public office in the United States until a woman is elected to the presidency. Germany has just elected its first woman, Angela Merkel, as chancellor, and Chile has just elected its first female president, Michelle Bachelet. Certainly the actions of these two very different countries, in different hemispheres, in addition to all of the other women who have headed their governments, should make Americans ask why not in the United States. While the media and pollsters continue to emphasize gender factors in contemplation of a woman becoming commander in chief, structural factors influence the likelihood of a woman being elected president.
The expectation that New York Senator and former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton will seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008 will most certainly revive gender as a factor in national politics. But let us look at some structural factors. First, Dianne Bystrom et al.'s analysis of the NewsStyle presentation of Clinton and her opponent Rick Lazio in the 2000 U.S. Senate election showed that the media covered Clinton and Lazio similarly in terms of favorability and viability, and that Clinton received stronger issue coverage than Lazio on several concerns salient to voters: the economy, national defense, health care, and education (2004, 201). Clinton enters her campaign for reelection to the Senate with high approval ratings among New York State residents, suggesting that she will easily win, giving a potential run for the White House a boost. She leads the early polls as a potential candidate for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, based primarily on name recognition, something most of the other potential contenders will have to construct. Her campaign coffers are ample, too, another important feature of successful runs for major office.7
In the 2005–6 election cycle through the March 31, 2006 reporting period, Hillary Rodham Clinton had raised over $27 million.
What do Americans appear to be making of the idea of a woman as president? How does Senator Clinton's presence as a top contender affect perspectives on a woman as president? From 1972 through 1998, the General Social Survey (GSS) asked a national sample that if their party “nominated a woman for President, would you vote for her if she were qualified for the job?” By 1998, 90% expressed support, while 6% said “no.” At that point, the GSS stopped asking the question, perhaps because it believed that it had reached a saturation point and was no longer an interesting question.8
Jennifer Lawless makes a similar comment (2004, 479–90).
The Gallup Poll has queried the American public about its support for the idea of a woman as president over a longer time frame than the GSS. In 2003, Gallup reported that 87% of Americans said they would vote for a woman if their party nominated a qualified one for president, a percentage that was down slightly from 92% support in 1999 (Jones and Moore 2003). In that 2003 poll, 85% of men and 89% of women said they would vote for a generally well-qualified woman for president. All age groups were supportive, although those over 65 lagged behind people under age 65 by several points. A more recent Gallup Poll found 85% reporting that they personally would vote for a qualified woman for president (Jones 2005).
The same poll found that nearly one-half of the American public (46%) thinks that the United States will have a female president in the next 10 years. Why more than half of the U.S. public does not think we will have a woman as president in the next 10 years remains a question. Gallup suggests that, in part, it is at least because Americans do not see their neighbors as ready to vote for a woman. By implication, they see gender as a factor.
The idea of a woman as president is no longer an abstract phenomenon for respondents to national surveys. We now have faces that respondents can call to mind when asked about their predilection to vote for or against a female candidate—particularly Senator Clinton or Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice. In this 2005 Gallup Poll, Republican identifiers were less likely than Democratic Party identifiers to say that they would vote for a qualified woman for president (76%–94%). This difference may be a reflection that the most likely next female candidate for president would be Senator Clinton, which affected Republican identifiers' support for the idea of a woman as president more generally. Furthermore, we need to consider whether a 13% opposition, as found in the 2003 Gallup Poll, would be a deterrent to party operatives in their support for advancing a potential woman candidate. The opposition may come primarily from nonvoters, for example, or hard-core partisan opponents of a particular candidate.
Gender is still a factor for the public in response to survey questions about whether a man or a woman president would better handle national security and domestic policy. In the Gallup survey, being a woman trumps being a man if the focus is on domestic issues, whereas the reverse is the case if the focus is national security. Thus, as we move forward to a new presidential campaign, the national context of that election could very well condition how opportune the situation would be for a woman seeking the presidency. Would Marvin Kalb ask Hillary Clinton or Condeleeza Rice the question he asked Geraldine Ferraro on Meet the Press in 1984 when she was the Democrats' vice presidential candidate: “Are you strong enough to push the button?” Given the strides women have made in political leadership positions, the way in which opponents of a woman as president in general or of a female candidate of the opposition party attempt to make gender an issue in such an election will certainly make for a lively—and perhaps conclusive—debate on the nature of gender in American elections.
