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Results from the 2019 Election
Elections were held last week for statewide executive and state legislative offices in Kentucky, Mississippi, New Jersey, and Virginia. The big news of the night was the partisan shift in both chambers of the Virginia General Assembly. The flipping of the House of Delegates and a Democratic caucus vote over the weekend means that current Minority Leader Eileen Fisher-Corn will become the first woman Speaker of the House of Delegates. Virginia is now also poised to become the 38th, and final required, state to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment. If they do so, the U.S. Congress would have to approve an extension in the state ratification deadline in order for the amendment to gain final passage. Read more about the history and potential future of the ERA in
The New York Times
.
Among the other results: Mississippi elected Republican Lynn Fitch as its first woman attorney general, Republican Allison Ball won re-election as Kentucky State Treasurer, and Virginia elected its first Muslim woman to the state senate. The New Jersey General Assembly election still has a number of undecided races, likely due to the state's new mail-in and provisional ballot rules. Meanwhile, Louisiana will hold run-offs this coming Saturday, following the first stage of their 2019 elections in October.
What's in Store for 2020
With one year until the 2020 elections, we asked experts from CAWP and from our community of friends and colleagues in the academic and practitioner fields for their views on what they're looking for in the 2020 cycle, and we got some fascinating responses. What will the presidential ticket look like? What
proportion
of candidates will women be? How will identities of women of color shape their campaigns and outcomes? Will we see more firsts and new records for women? How will non-college-educated White women vote in 2020? What will happen with GOP women in 2020 following a disappointing 2018? How will women raise and spend money compared to men in 2020? How will women running for president be evaluated as speakers and public leaders?
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Debate Next Week
The fifth Democratic presidential primary debate takes place next Wednesday, November
20
th
and will be presented by MSNBC and
The Washington Post
. It will be the first debate of the cycle hosted by an all-women team of moderators, and will feature Senators Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, and Elizabeth Warren and Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard among its participants. We'll be live-tweeting with experts from the scholar, practitioner, and activist fields from
@CAWP_RU
using the
#genderlens2020 tag
, so tune in to MSNBC at 9pm ET and join the conversation on Twitter.
News from the Trail
Following the 2019 elections, numerous news outlets relied on CAWP information and analysis for their coverage.
Refinery 29
cited CAWP Director Debbie Walsh on the election results and the partisan imbalance in women's representation.
The Associated Press
used data from our elections press release for their coverage indicating a continuing momentum from 2018. Here in New Jersey,
NJ Spotlight
spoke to Walsh about our state elections and how 2019 seems to be another status quo year for a state noted for its strong parties, entrenched incumbents, and distinct partisan lean.
Looking to the future,
The New York Times published new polling and conversations with voters that indicate trouble for Senator Elizabeth Warren in the presidential race. In head-to-head match-ups with President Trump, Warren struggles in a number of swing states compared to fellow front-runners former Vice President Joe Biden and Senator Bernie Sanders, and one voter interviewed for the piece seemed to echo the gendered criticisms that dogged Hillary Clinton. Meanwhile, Maureen Groppe of
USA Today interviewed Walsh for a story about Karen Pence and whether she will be a valuable surrogate in the 2020 race, and Walsh noted that, while Pence likely won't convert anyone, she might be able to motivate women who already support Trump.
Forbes approaches a question that we often get: was 2018 a unique year or the beginning of a new trend? Walsh provided analysis for the article, noting in particular that we're seeing an upswing of women running on the GOP side and that we're starting to notice an "AOC Effect" of Democratic women mounting intraparty challenges. See more CAWP information about women running in 2020 at our
Election Watch site.
Lastly, Maya Rockeymoore Cummings, the widow of Representative Elijah Cummings, announced via an interview with
The Baltimore Sun that she would seek her late husband's seat in the upcoming special election to determine his successor in Congress. Rockeymoore Cummings is a public policy consultant, former gubernatorial candidate, and the chair of the Maryland Democratic Party. Learn more about widows who succeeded their husbands in Congress from this
CAWP fact sheet.
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What Will Hill's Experience Mean for Women's Political Engagement?
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New analysis on
CAWP's Election Watch blog: CAWP research associate Claire Gothreau pulls from the "Barriers to Progress" section of our recent report,
Unfinished Business: Women Running in 2018 and Beyond to examine the Katie Hill scandal and the effects of sexualized harassment and threats of violence on women running for office. Gothreau writes about the forms this abuse takes, the ways it is frequently racialized and sexualized, and whether harassment of women candidates and officeholders may dampen women's political participation. Of particular note, in her own research prior to joining CAWP, Gothreau found that the reverse may be true: "I find that as experiences with harassment and discrimination increase, so does political efficacy, interest, and propensity to participate in politics." Read more
here and see coverage of the piece on
ABC and
Fast Company.
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We bring you unmatched data and the analysis to put it in perspective.
Support CAWP today.
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Registration Open for Ready to Run®
New Jersey!
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Next year's
Ready to Run® New Jersey will be held from March 20-21, with pre-conference programs for women of color beginning on the afternoon of the 20th. Ready to Run® is a non-partisan campaign training program to encourage women to run for elective office, position themselves for appointive office, work on a campaign, or get involved in public life in other ways. Our two-track system has courses both for women preparing for an upcoming political campaign and for those who are looking to deepen their political engagement and learn how best to interface with public officials. Register now for early-bird rates!
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International News
Back to the subject of harassment and political violence... In Bolivia, according to
The New York Times
, a small town mayor who had supported President Evo Morales amid ongoing protests was doused with paint and had her hair forcibly cut by protesters. She was only released after she was forced to a sign a letter of resignation; Morales himself resigned over the weekend. The
Times also reports that as many as 18 women members of parliament in the U.K. have declined to seek re-election, and several of them have specifically cited threats and abuse as the determining factor for them to leave politics. On the bright side, and perhaps confirming the aforementioned
research on harassment and political efficacy from Claire Gothreau, New Zealand parliamentarian Chlöe Swarbrick was being heckled during a floor speech on climate change when she unleashed what's become a rallying cry for millennials and Gen Z: "
OK, boomer," she said, shutting down her heckler and rousing admiration across the globe.
Doing the Work
A new PAC,
Matriarch, has been launched to support the political careers of working class women, with the aim of fostering political talent that doesn't already have access to networks for funding and political connections. Read more at
Common Dreams
. Our friends at the
Barbara Lee Family Foundation released new research that challenges the common perceptions of candidate "electability." The
report relies, in part, on research CAWP participated in collecting regarding 2018 gubernatorial races. Lastly, Marya Stark of
Emerge America talks to
Slate about how to keep the momentum of the 2018 elections going into 2020 and beyond, and Stark talks about finding local organizations to get involved with, citing CAWP's own
Women's Political Power Map as a key resource for finding a group that works for you. We agree!
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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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