Democrats boast 'unprecedented' surge in women running for office post 2016 election

Record ID: 905203

  • Title: Democrats boast 'unprecedented' surge in women running for office post 2016 election
  • Date: 3rd August 2017
  • Summary: WASHINGTON D.C., UNITED STATES (FILE - JANUARY 21, 2016) (REUTERS) VARIOUS OF PEOPLE PARTICIPATING IN THE ANTI-TRUMP "WOMEN'S MARCH" THE DAY AFTER TRUMP'S INAUGURATION
  • Embargoed: 17th August 2017 14:21
  • Keywords: EMILY's List surge in women running for office Cocktails for Change event Emerge America Run For Something Hillary Clinton female candidates Women's March
  • Location: WASHINGTON, D.C. / NEW YORK + HEMPSTEAD, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES / UNIDENTIFIED
  • City: WASHINGTON, D.C. / NEW YORK + HEMPSTEAD, NEW YORK, UNITED STATES / UNIDENTIFIED
  • Country: USA
  • Topics: Government/Politics,Elections/Voting
  • Reuters ID: LVA0026SMC287
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Six months after women marched in their thousands against President Donald Trump, Democratic training groups have reported a huge surge in the number of women running for political office.
    "It is unprecedented," said Stephanie Schriock, president of EMILY's List, an organization that recruits and trains pro-choice women to launch their campaigns.
    The group has been contacted by more than 16,000 women since Election Day, up from approximately 900 in all of 2015 and 2016, she said.
    Similarly, applications for Emerge America, a training program for Democratic women, have increased by 87 percent.
    Run For Something, a new political action committee that helps millennials run for down-ballot office, has drawn 10,000 contenders. Roughly half of them have been women.
    First-time candidates cite Trump's attitude toward women, his conservative agenda, and treatment of Democrat Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential race as their primary motivations.
    Before Trump beat Clinton, with a boost from 53 percent of white female voters, Hala Ayala had never considered running for office.
    "When I saw that she'd lost, it was very heavy," she said at a recent "Cocktails for Change" event hosted by EMILY's List in Washington. "I think it was a political depression, if you will, but I had to do something with that energy."
    Ayala, a former cybersecurity expert with the Department of Homeland Security, is now a Democratic candidate for the 51st district of the Virginia House of Delegates.
    Another candidate, Laura Lombard, was the executive director of an international consulting business in Washington before returning to her native Kansas to run for Congress.
    She is not surprised that many women were inspired to enter politics following Trump's win.
    "Women don't tend to run because they want this to be their career necessarily," Lombard said. "They run because there's something wrong and they want to fix it."
    She ran for the seat vacated by Republican Representative Mike Pompeo when he was chosen as Trump's CIA director. Lombard lost but is running again in next year's Congressional mid-term election.
    The surge of interest among women and other first-time candidates has given dispirited Democrats, long criticized as a top-heavy party lacking fresh faces, hope for a renaissance at the local and state levels after repeated setbacks under President Barack Obama.
    Building from the ground up, from the school board to the statehouse, is a party priority after losing nearly 1,000 state legislative seats in the last eight years. Republicans also control the White House, both chambers of Congress and 33 governor's offices, the most in nearly a century.
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