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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Jessica Rettig
Carly Fiorina, Nikki Haley, Meg Whitman, and others are making waves this election cycle
Eleanor Roosevelt famously said, "A woman is like a tea bag -- you never know how strong she is until she gets into hot water." Given the results of last week's primaries, in which both women and the
In what's been dubbed "the year of the outsider," female victors of the week's statewide primary races showed that being a strong woman can be an asset. And on an issue which, experts say, had been a campaign liability for many women in the past -- the economy --
"We have come a long way to see very strong, viable candidates who are not using gender as an issue. Reproductive rights or equal pay -- you're not hearing about that," says Leslie Sanchez, Republican strategist and author of the 2009 book, You've Come a Long Way, Maybe, about the new role of women in politics. "They're talking about how can we get our financial budgets in order, how can we continue to bring jobs to our states."
In California, for example, Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman joined Linda McMahon, who won Connecticut's Republican Senate nomination last month, in the ranks of female former CEOs nominated for statewide elected office. Both Fiorina, a former chief of
In South Carolina's Republican gubernatorial primary, Nikki Haley, a
And in Nevada, former state assemblywoman Sharron Angle won the GOP Senate nod as the most conservative of the top contenders. She parlayed her outsider status into major
Traditionally, successful female candidates tended to be Democrats who would emphasize women's issues, experts say. But that is changing.
"They led with their ideas not their gender," Kellyanne Conway, a Republican pollster, says of the 2010 field. "The political establishment has been insulting women for decades by presuming that all women in politics are about is abortion, that we can't do the math, we don't understand tax policy." It turns out, she adds, that "we can do the math and girl talk 2010 is all about fiscal issues."
And according to Democratic pollster Celinda Lake, what all of these Republican races indicate is a changing party base. The party's core, Lake argues, is moving from one that had excluded women to one that encourages them. "The change it represents is the decline of the born-again Christian base and the emergence of the
That helps explain how Arkansas Democratic
Sen. Blanche Lincoln put the "incumbents are doomed" conventional wisdom on its head in last week's surprise victory. The two-term incumbent harnessed anti-establishment sentiments, upsetting Lt. Gov. Bill Halter, who had ridden voter anger into Tuesday's runoff. After labor groups spent
Despite the recent victories, women are still a small minority among this year's candidates. For example, women only won 23 percent of all of last Tuesday's races. Also, there are only 7 women of 105 total candidates that ran with the
Whether this is a woman's year or not, Eleanor Roosevelt's proverbial kettle will surely keep boiling for these candidates into November.
Available at Amazon.com:
The Disappearing Center: Engaged Citizens, Polarization, and American Democracy
The Virtues of Mendacity: On Lying in Politics
Bush on the Home Front: Domestic Policy Triumphs and Setbacks
The Political Fix: Changing the Game of American Democracy, from the Grassroots to the White House
AMERICAN POLITICS
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