- Title: A 'tidal wave' of women predicted to win in U.S. election -analyst
- Date: 24th October 2018
- Summary: WASHINGTON, D.C., UNITED STATES (JULY 11, 2018) (REUTERS) (SOUNDBITE) (English) DEMOCRATIC SENATOR PATTY MURRAY, ELECTED IN 1992'S SO-CALLED "YEAR OF THE WOMAN, SAYING: "Oh my gosh, I had people say to me, you should change your name from Patty to Pat so people don't know they're voting for a woman. And I was like, what, are you kidding me? I'm running because I have a voi
- Embargoed: 7th November 2018 19:52
- Keywords: Year of the Woman 1992 election Senator Patty Murray Senator Barbara Mikulski pink wave women candidates congressional election Jennifer Wexton
- Location: WASHINGTON, D.C. / CENTERVILLE, VIRGINIA / BALTIMORE + UNIDENTIFIED LOCATION, MARYLAND / CHICAGO, ILLINOIS / SAN FRANCISCO + UNIDENTIFIED LOCATION, UNITED STATES / UNIDENTIFIED
- City: WASHINGTON, D.C. / CENTERVILLE, VIRGINIA / BALTIMORE + UNIDENTIFIED LOCATION, MARYLAND / CHICAGO, ILLINOIS / SAN FRANCISCO + UNIDENTIFIED LOCATION, UNITED STATES / UNIDENTIFIED
- Country: USA
- Topics: Government/Politics,Elections/Voting
- Reuters ID: LVA00893G5AH3
- Aspect Ratio: 16:9
- Story Text: Amid funnel-cake stands and kids games, a first-time Democratic congressional candidate Jennifer Wexton is making her pitch to voters at an outdoor festival in Centreville, Virginia, ahead of the congressional elections on Nov. 6.
Wexton, a lawyer and state senator, is among a record number of women running for office this year, 75 percent of whom are Democrats.
Like a lot of first-time candidates, Wexton said she was motivated to run after the election of President Donald Trump, citing his rhetoric on women and minorities.
"It's amazing...we're going through a lot of the same things, so it's nice to have kind of that sisterhood of support," she said of the surge in women candidates.
This year, 476 women filed to run for the House of Representatives alone; another 53 for the Senate. Around half won their primaries and are now gearing up to compete in the general election, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
"I think this year in the midterm elections, we are poised to really see not just a wave of women that are going to be winning, but maybe a tidal wave of women that are going to be winning," predicted Betsy Fischer Martin, executive director of the Women and Politics Institute at American University in Washington.
The 2018 election has been compared to 1992's so-called "Year of the Women", when a record number of women won seats in Congress, bringing total representation to around 10 percent. It was the year after Anita Hill accused then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas of sexual harassment during his confirmation hearing before an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee.
Former Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski was one of only two women in the U.S. Senate at the time.
"Women were outraged about the way she was harassed and humiliated by a Senate committee on which no women sat," Mikulski recalled. "And women were motivated to run in numbers never heard before."
The number of women senators tripled in that election, ushering in four new Democratic members: Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Patty Murray, and Carol Moseley Braun, the first black woman to serve in the U.S. Senate.
Murray was a Washington state senator at the time of Anita Hill's testimony.
"I was at home and I watched the hearings...I kept saying, 'no one is saying what I would say if I had the opportunity to be sitting there and questioning Clarence Thomas," she recalled.
"I actually went to an event that night with some friends, and I said, 'I'm going to have to run for the Senate, because there's nobody there saying what I'd say.' And we laughed and then we didn't laugh. How else do you change things if your voice isn't there?"
But a lot has changed since 1992. Whereas Murray was advised to call herself "Pat" instead of "Patty" so voters would think she was a man on the ballot, many women candidates this year are loudly displaying their gender in campaign ads: from breast-feeding their babies to telling men to "grow a pair of ovaries."
"I think over the last five or six years, we're seeing more and more women candidates not only being comfortable with their gender, but actually using that as an issue in their campaign," said Fischer. But it remains to be seen if 2018 is the beginning of a longer trend.
"The movement kind of stopped after 1992 for awhile and we got the 'Republican Revolution,'" said Fischer, referring to a huge swell in Republican winners in the 1994 election, very few of whom were women. "The key, I think, now for the 'Year of the Woman' in 2018 will be: can women keep that momentum going in other election years? And what will we see in 2020?"
But for now, all eyes are on November 6th to see if women's representation in Congress - currently around 20 percent - will inch upward.
For pioneers like Mikulski, it is an exciting prospect.
"I can't wait until Election Day when they're elected - and swearing-in day. I'm going to be there going, 'hoorah, hoorah!'"
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released this week showed Democrats held a 5 percentage point lead over Republicans with likely voters in the congressional midterm elections. With women, Democrats held an 8-point lead. An earlier NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll showed Democrats with a 9-point lead over Republicans with likely voters and a whopping 25-point lead with women. - Copyright Holder: FILE REUTERS (CAN SELL)
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