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“The numbers we saw in 2018 were very lopsided,” says Debbie Walsh, director for the Center for American Women and Politics. “I think we could see, in the next cycle or two in the U.S. House and in state legislatures, that women could make up 50 percent of the caucus. But that is so far from where we are on the Republican side.”
She pointed out that despite 2018’s surge, women still make up less than 25 percent of Congress — and the majority of that is Democrats. Of the 126 women in Congress, only 21 are Republicans. In 2018, women candidates in particular were crucial to delivering Democrats the House of Representatives.
“It’s not as though we’ve achieved political parity,” Walsh says.
Still, she recognizes the progress being made, especially on the conservative side. In some races, multiple Republican women will run against each other in primaries.
No conservative organization or PAC equals the political muscle of EMILY’s List, a force on the progressive side with substantial money and resources that helped Democrats take back the House of Representatives in 2018.
But there’s a growing movement on the conservative side.
Maggie’s List, a PAC focused on electing anti-abortion conservative women, has been around for almost a decade. Winning 4 Women, a PAC dedicated to supporting free-market conservative women for federal office, started two years ago. And in January, Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Republican representing the New York 21st District, launched E-PAC, which aims to “engage, empower, elevate and elect Republican women in Congress.”
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Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who's been visible during the impeachment hearings, launched a PAC in January dedicated to electing Republican women. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik) ORG XMIT: DCAH483
Walsh, the director of the Center of American Women and Politics, sees a lot of potential for Republican women in 2020.
“There’s more room for growth on the Republican side than on the Democratic side because there’s so many seats that flipped from red to blue,” she says. “Those seats are vulnerable and Republicans are going to try to take advantage of that vulnerability. If they’re smart, they’ll run a lot of women in those seats.”
Consider this opinion:Are most women who run for president unlikable? Asking is sexist, yet many voters agree.
'I am not a quitter'
Those vulnerable districts include the California 39th District, a decades-long Republican stronghold in Orange County that went blue in 2018 in a race that went down to the wire.
Young Kim, a 57-year-old Republican immigrant from South Korea, was so confident she’d maintain her slim lead against Democrat Gil Cisneros that she attended freshman orientation in D.C. in late November 2016. (She was just one of two Republican women there; the other was Carol Miller from the West Virginia 3rd District.)
But after every vote was tallied, Kim found out she’d lost. Cisneros had won the district with just 51.6 percent of the vote.
Young says she’s tired of watching the left characterizing Republicans as the party of old, white (and often wealthy) men. She’s trying to rebrand the “grand old party” to the “grand opportunity party.”
As for why she decided to run again, Young says simply and directly, “I am not a quitter.” If elected, she’ll be the first Korean American in Congress.
In this Saturday, Oct. 6, 2018, photo Young Kim, is pictured outside her campaign office in Yorba Linda during her run for a U.S. House seat in the 39th District in California. She lost and is now running again to win the seat in 2020 and become the first Korean American woman elected to Congress.
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There are so many women like Young running again in 2020, in fact, that the Center of American Women and Politics is tracking them as “rebound candidates." It’s the first time they’ve collected that data set. They’ve identified 79 so far, with Ortiz Jones’ Texas seat considered one of the best Democratic pick-up opportunities in the country.
“There’s been a lot of conversations in the past about how women will lose, then they’ll move on and do something else, whereas a man often thinks, ‘Oh, they just need another opportunity to vote for me,’” says Walsh, the Center’s director since 2001. “I think these are very encouraging numbers.”
In 2018, two political ads went viral from Democratic female candidates: MJ Hegar’s “Doors” and Amy McGrath’s “Told Me” video.
McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot running in the Kentucky 6th District, and Hegar, a former Air Force pilot running in the Texas 31st District, both lost their races to Republican incumbents by about three percent.
Now, both are running for the U.S. Senate. McGrath is trying to unseat Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who was elected in 1984, while Hegar is trying to beat incumbent John Cornyn.
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After losing her 2018 congressional race, Kentucky Democratic Amy McGrath, is running again in 2020, this time for U.S. Senate. (AP Photo/Timothy D. Easley) ORG XMIT: KYTE102
For Hegar, it's about defining loss differently than others. Yes, her opponent, John Carter, got more votes than her in the 2018 race. But he only beat her by 2.9%; his margin of victory in his previous race had been 32 points.
"That sure didn't feel like a loss," Hegar says. "It was not a gut punch."
But she acknowledges this time around, there will be no moral victories. Her race in 2018 proved Texas is winnable for Democrats, and she’s holding herself to that standard in 2020.
Strategists say that shift is generational.
Amanda Renteria has spent almost her entire career in politics, serving behind the scenes (national political director for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential bid and chief of staff to U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California) and out front (failed bids in both the California 21st District and in the 2018 California gubernatorial race). Now she’s interim president at Emerge, an organization that teaches Democratic women how to run for office — and she’s not surprised so many women are running again after losing in 2018.
“There’s often been this underlying sentiment for women as they run where they’re wondering if they belong,” Renteria says. “Now you’re seeing a different conversation. Now we know we belong at the table.”
Thousands of women running for, and winning, political offices is only the beginning of the story, Renteria says.
“We’re in Chapter 2,” she says. “Chapter 3 is gonna be actual policies being enacted that women will lead the charge on, like paid family leave.”
To Renteria, the first Latina chief of staff in Senate history, it’s not just about watching women who look like you run and win — it’s about the network that those women create, and the electorate they build.
Rhodesia Ransom is living proof of that.
Ransom, a 45-year-old nonprofit director, is running for San Joaquin County Supervisor in the Bay Area of California, a seat she lost by just 2% in 2014. Since 2016, she’s been serving on her local city council. But she wants more — namely, to be the first African-American on the San Joaquin board of supervisors.
Members of the black community, Ransom says, know they’re capable of anything because “we already grew up beating the odds.” But when she saw Jayne Williams, another black woman, run for Oakland city attorney, she says it opened her mind.
Now, she sees women running all over the country, on both sides of the aisle, in majority-minority communities and majority-white communities.
“When you run as a woman, it’s not about fighting inner voices of doubt,” Ransom says. “It’s about fighting other people’s stereotypes of old, white men being the only acceptable form of representation.
“We have to figure out how to normalize lots of women running. We just have to get it done — and we’re going to.”
