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Leah Vukmir and incumbent Tammy Baldwin, opponents for U.S. Senate from Wisconsin |
Women have spent the last two weeks knocking down a number of records for primary success. First, following the August 7th primary, a new high-water mark was set for the number of
women winning primaries in U.S. House and gubernatorial races. Those records currently stand at 198 and 13 nominees, respectively, up from the previous records of 167 (set in 2016) and 10 (set in 1994). Next, five primary victories in races in Wisconsin and Minnesota on August 14th nudged the
record for Senate nominees to 19, just one more than the previous record of 18, set in 2012. Finally, this primary season has also seen a record number of primaries advance
women candidates from both major parties to the general election. This year, at least 28 U.S. congressional races will be contested between two women, up from the previous record of 17, first set in 2002. For analysis about
woman versus woman races, read CAWP scholar Kelly Dittmar's piece on Gender Watch 2018,
Gender Neutrality in All-Female (or All-Male) Contests is a Myth.
Tonight we may also see another record broken for women's primary success in 2018; women are on the verge of passing the record of 2,649 nominees for state legislative races around the country. Today's primaries in Alaska and Wyoming could well push the 2018 total past the record set in 2016. Check out CAWP's
Election Watch to see how
women state legislative candidates have been faring this cycle and how the results compare to elections going back to 2000.
After tonight, only seven more state primaries to go!
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Primary Outlook for Alaska and Wyoming
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Kelly Dittmar, Project Director for Gender Watch 2018, provides outlooks on women candidates in tonight's primary elections in Alaska and Wyoming. Stay tuned to Gender Watch for a full analysis of results tomorrow morning.
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Support our mission of research, education, and empowerment with a tax deductible $50 gift.
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Launch your Campaign Career
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Ready to Run® will host a campaign training workshop on Saturday, October 20th from 9am to 3:30pm at the Eagleton Institute of Politics in New Brunswick. The workshop,
Political Campaigns for Career Women: An Operative's Guide to the Industry, will be presented by strategic communications expert
Eva Pusateri, and provides an introduction to fast-paced, exciting political careers many people don't even know exist. Whether you aim to support candidates, issues, or your political party, you can turn your enthusiasm into a power career.
Register now!
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CAWP scholar and Gender Watch 2018 Project Director Kelly Dittmar and NEW Leadership™ Director Christabel Cruz will both appear on panels at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Boston. On Friday, August 31st at 8 am, Kelly Dittmar will present research on gender, race, and political staff for the panel
Gender and the Importance of Campaign Staff and Family. Christabel Cruz will participate in the signature panel for the Women's Caucus for Political Science on the theme
Emerging Scholarship on Women of Color in Politics at 4:00 pm on Saturday, September 1st. She will be presenting her dissertation research on Latinas in local office. For more information, check out the
APSA Annual Meeting and Exhibition site.
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CAWP's Kelly Dittmar moderating
the panel |
On August 6th, Kelly Dittmar moderated a panel at the Council of State Governments Eastern Regional Conference titled #MeToo and Women and Politics. The panel, which featured Speaker Pro Tempore of the Maryland Generally Assembly Adrienne Jones, Rhode Island State Representative Teresa Tanzi, Pennsylvania State Representative Christopher Rabb, and New York State Assemblywoman Nily Rozic, focused on new and forthcoming legislation that seeks to address sexual harassment and establish clear guidelines for appropriate workplace behavior, investigative mechanisms, and standards for transparency.
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With all the breakthroughs for women and politics, media across the country and the world have been coming to CAWP for context and analysis. Following the new record set for women nominees in U.S. House and gubernatorial races, CAWP appeared in stories on
CNN, the
BBC,
Vox, and
HuffPost, among others, while Danielle Kurtzleben turned our data into fantastic visuals at
NPR. Celeste Katz of
Glamour featured CAWP data when the record for Senate nominees was broken, as did
ABC and
VICE News.
Last week,
The New York Times
relied on CAWP for a story about the record number of all-women Senate races this year, while the
NYT's
Kate Zernike discussed the overall woman vs. woman race record in a Q&A about women in this year's election.
Reuters
, meanwhile, uses CAWP data to talk about the increasing number of women seeking and winning primaries for state legislative office.
In other news, CAWP Director Debbie Walsh, following her interview on
The Takeaway, was interviewed by
The Telegraph and
The Associated Press about women veterans running for office. Kelly Dittmar, meanwhile, was interviewed by
The Los Angeles Times about the Nevada political environment, where its state legislature next year may be both more than 50% women and also have a brothel-owner as an assemblyman. In
TIME, Walsh discusses the history of women running for office while pregnant in a story about the New York Attorney General candidacy of Zephyr Teachout. CAWP data appeared in a story on
Open Secrets on the disparity of women's success by party over time, in
The Atlantic for a story about women voters in 2018, and in
Washington Post coverage of women candidates and fundraising gaps.
It's been busy.
Potpourri
Over on
538, there's an analysis on what kinds of candidates the Democrats are running this year, and one fact stood out to us: 56% of women running for governorships have previous experience in elective office, compared to just 37% of the men, while 80% of women running for U.S. Senate have held office, compared to only 22% of men. There's been some discussion of the number of women running for office this year that seems to posit that women candidates have appeared as if from thin air, an impression we've often tried to correct. Many women seeking office in this record breaking year have been laying the foundations and doing the work for years.
The Hill recently catalogued the number of committee and subcommittee chairmanships that would be led by women if the Democrats were to win the House in November. They count 35 women who would take on a total 40 chairmanships, a large jump over the current House committee makeup. Six full committees would see women take the gavel: Financial Services; Small Business; Science, Space and Technology; House Administration; the Joint Economic Committee; and the powerful Appropriations Committee. An additional 34 subcommittees would have a woman chair. Check out our fact sheet on women in congressional leadership for more.
Following the
May FEC ruling that congressional candidates can use campaign funds for childcare following a request from New York U.S. House candidate Liuba Grechen Shirley,
Governing Magazine
takes a look at how states are reacting to similar appeals. For some states, like Texas and Alabama, officials have allowed state and local candidates to use campaign funds for childcare expenses incurred due to campaigning, while others, Iowa and Connecticut for example, have thus far denied such requests. As women continue to engage with politics, and more women choose to start their political careers earlier in life, as their male counterparts do, debates around issues like this will be interesting to watch.
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Center for American Women and Politics
Eagleton Institute of Politics
Rutgers University | New Brunswick
191 Ryders Lane, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-8557
(848) 932-9384 - Fax: (732) 932-6778
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