The 2010s were a transformative decade for women in politics. But the biggest trend has been obscured by 2018’s female-led Democratic wave in Congress: G.O.P. women, at both the national and state levels, are on the brink of extinction.
Republicans will ring in the new year with only 13 women in the House of Representatives, the lowest number since 1993, and eight women in the Senate. (There are, for comparison, 88 Democratic women in the House and 17 Democratic women in the Senate.)
The prospects for Republican women looked quite different at the decade’s start. Pundits heralded 2010 as the Year of the Republican Woman. In a speech that spring, Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, touted her endorsements for the election of “common-sense conservative women.”
“Look out, Washington, because there’s a whole stampede of pink elephants crossing the line,” she said.
For a moment, it seemed that Ms. Palin and her pack of “Mama Grizzlies” would become the prime beneficiaries of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. Yet as 2020 begins, Republicans have Ms. Palin and her brand of right-wing populism — revived and carried on by Donald Trump — to thank for the endangered state of the Republican woman. (...)
In 2012, female voters, outraged over G.O.P. attacks on Planned Parenthood and access to birth control, powered President Barack Obama to re-election and denied Republicans two winnable Senate seats. Republican women’s representation in Congress decreased by 21 percent, while Democratic women increased theirs by 26 percent
Acknowledging the party’s mistakes with female voters, the G.O.P. fielded female candidates in the 2014 midterms who could appeal more broadly. These candidates downplayed their social conservatism and leaned in to their biographies as glass-breaking female leaders. In 2014, Martha McSally, the nation’s first female fighter pilot to serve in combat, won the Republican primary in a swing district in Arizona. Elise Stefanik, then the youngest congresswoman ever elected, was chosen to be co-chairwoman of the party’s moderate caucus.
With the exception of her endorsement of Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, Ms. Palin played a minor role in the 2014 midterm victories. Her days as queen-maker seemed over. Most signs suggested that Republican pragmatism would prevail going forward.
The rise of Donald Trump eliminated any chance of that. The signs of women’s disillusionment with the party were immediate. One day after President Trump’s inauguration, an estimated four million people, mostly women, participated in hundreds of women’s marches throughout the United States. In the months that followed, women mobilized to defeat Republicans at the federal, state and local levels.
In the 2018 midterms, every Republican congresswoman from the 2014 class except for Ms. Stefanik lost. Martha McSally was defeated, though she was appointed by Arizona’s Republican governor to fill John McCain’s Senate seat after Mr. McCain died. She faces a tough election battle in 2020.
Despite winning three governors’ races and one open Senate seat in 2018, Republican women will end the decade with their governors and senators outnumbered two to one by their Democratic counterparts. Three of the four current female Republican senators running in 2020 face highly competitive elections in 2020. There are more than six times as many Democratic women as Republican women in the House.
Granted, Republicans — both men and women — have suffered dramatic losses in elections at national, state and local levels since 2016; they have lost control of the House, eight governorships and nine state legislative chambers since Mr. Trump’s election. But female Republican candidates and officeholders face an existential threat.
Mr. Trump’s misogyny and the party’s far-right stance on issues such as abortion and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, guns and immigration have driven away many female voters. Women favor the Democratic Party over the Republican Party by a 19-point margin, according to the Pew Research Center. Seventy-three percent of women under the age of 30 disapprove of the president’s performance, according to the Harvard Institute of Politics Youth Poll.
Suburban and college-educated white women, once reliable Republican voters, have fled the party in droves since Mr. Trump’s election. According to the Brookings Institution, white college educated women increased their vote for Democrats by 13 points between 2016 and 2018. Among women, only white evangelicals remain firmly committed to the G.O.P. and Mr. Trump.
The alienation of female voters from the Republican Party is compounded by the indifference, at best, of Republican men to female candidates.
by Nancy L. Cohen, NY Times | Read more:
Image:Erin Schaff/The New York Times
Republicans will ring in the new year with only 13 women in the House of Representatives, the lowest number since 1993, and eight women in the Senate. (There are, for comparison, 88 Democratic women in the House and 17 Democratic women in the Senate.)
The prospects for Republican women looked quite different at the decade’s start. Pundits heralded 2010 as the Year of the Republican Woman. In a speech that spring, Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee, touted her endorsements for the election of “common-sense conservative women.”
“Look out, Washington, because there’s a whole stampede of pink elephants crossing the line,” she said.For a moment, it seemed that Ms. Palin and her pack of “Mama Grizzlies” would become the prime beneficiaries of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. Yet as 2020 begins, Republicans have Ms. Palin and her brand of right-wing populism — revived and carried on by Donald Trump — to thank for the endangered state of the Republican woman. (...)
In 2012, female voters, outraged over G.O.P. attacks on Planned Parenthood and access to birth control, powered President Barack Obama to re-election and denied Republicans two winnable Senate seats. Republican women’s representation in Congress decreased by 21 percent, while Democratic women increased theirs by 26 percent
Acknowledging the party’s mistakes with female voters, the G.O.P. fielded female candidates in the 2014 midterms who could appeal more broadly. These candidates downplayed their social conservatism and leaned in to their biographies as glass-breaking female leaders. In 2014, Martha McSally, the nation’s first female fighter pilot to serve in combat, won the Republican primary in a swing district in Arizona. Elise Stefanik, then the youngest congresswoman ever elected, was chosen to be co-chairwoman of the party’s moderate caucus.
With the exception of her endorsement of Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, Ms. Palin played a minor role in the 2014 midterm victories. Her days as queen-maker seemed over. Most signs suggested that Republican pragmatism would prevail going forward.
The rise of Donald Trump eliminated any chance of that. The signs of women’s disillusionment with the party were immediate. One day after President Trump’s inauguration, an estimated four million people, mostly women, participated in hundreds of women’s marches throughout the United States. In the months that followed, women mobilized to defeat Republicans at the federal, state and local levels.
In the 2018 midterms, every Republican congresswoman from the 2014 class except for Ms. Stefanik lost. Martha McSally was defeated, though she was appointed by Arizona’s Republican governor to fill John McCain’s Senate seat after Mr. McCain died. She faces a tough election battle in 2020.
Despite winning three governors’ races and one open Senate seat in 2018, Republican women will end the decade with their governors and senators outnumbered two to one by their Democratic counterparts. Three of the four current female Republican senators running in 2020 face highly competitive elections in 2020. There are more than six times as many Democratic women as Republican women in the House.
Granted, Republicans — both men and women — have suffered dramatic losses in elections at national, state and local levels since 2016; they have lost control of the House, eight governorships and nine state legislative chambers since Mr. Trump’s election. But female Republican candidates and officeholders face an existential threat.
Mr. Trump’s misogyny and the party’s far-right stance on issues such as abortion and L.G.B.T.Q. rights, guns and immigration have driven away many female voters. Women favor the Democratic Party over the Republican Party by a 19-point margin, according to the Pew Research Center. Seventy-three percent of women under the age of 30 disapprove of the president’s performance, according to the Harvard Institute of Politics Youth Poll.
Suburban and college-educated white women, once reliable Republican voters, have fled the party in droves since Mr. Trump’s election. According to the Brookings Institution, white college educated women increased their vote for Democrats by 13 points between 2016 and 2018. Among women, only white evangelicals remain firmly committed to the G.O.P. and Mr. Trump.
The alienation of female voters from the Republican Party is compounded by the indifference, at best, of Republican men to female candidates.
by Nancy L. Cohen, NY Times | Read more:
Image:Erin Schaff/The New York Times
