If we dont run, then we wont achieve. Why a record number of women are eyeing a run for governor

Good article.


‘If we don’t run, then we won’t achieve.’ Why a record number of women are eyeing a run for governor.



https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/if-we-dont-run-then-we-wont-achieve-why-a-record-number-of-women-are-eyeing-a-run-for-governor/2018/01/01/10938cf4-e674-11e7-a65d-1ac0fd7f097e_story.html?utm_term=.914196c5c4bc


By Karen Tumulty January 1 at 6:11 PM

Gretchen Whitmer, Democratic candidate for Michigan governor, in Detroit on Dec. 19. (Ali Lapetina/For The Washington Post)

EAST LANSING, Mich. — At a time when nearly every aspect of politics feels suffused by issues involving gender, the leading Democratic contender for Michigan governor makes a point of rarely mentioning hers.

“I talk about jobs,” former Senate Minority Leader Gretchen Whitmer says. “I talk about education. I talk about making government work for people. That’s really the dinner-table issues that I hear from Michiganders in every part of our state.”

Whitmer might not bring it up, but she represents what probably will be one of the 2018 elections’ most significant trends: More women than ever are in the mix to potentially lead their states as governor — traditionally one of the hardest reaches for female candidates and a position now held by just half a dozen women.

Yet this year, at least 79 women — 49 Democrats and 30 Republicans — are running for governor or seriously considering it as filing deadlines approach, according to a tally by the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University.

The numbers are more than double what they were four years ago and on track to surpass the record 34 women who ran for governor in 1994. In Ohio, there are three women running for governor in the Democratic primary and one in the Republican. In Georgia, both Democratic candidates are named Stacey.

Their candidacies are testing long-held attitudes about women and leadership. Voters tended to see women as “well suited for legislatures, where it’s collaborative,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the center. “It runs up against the stereotype to see women as the chief decider, the place where the buck stops.”




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Gretchen Whitmer speaks with community organizers and residents in Detroit. (Ali Lapetina/For The Washington Post)

The Trump era has seen a new burst of political activism among women, beginning the day after the inauguration, when they turned out by the tens of thousands in cities and towns across the nation, for what is thought to have been among the largest single-day political demonstration in U.S. history.

Female candidates are stepping up at every level of the ballot. Of the 15 seats that Democrats picked up in the Virginia House of Delegates, 11 were won by women — and the number could grow, depending on how the continuing dispute over another race is settled.

There is a real possibility in Michigan that Democrats may offer female nominees for every statewide elected office — something that doesn’t worry Whitmer. In this environment, she said, “people look at that as an asset.”

[Women marched. Now what?]

The 46-year-old attorney declared her candidacy nearly a year ago. Michigan Democrats were still reeling from a presidential election that saw Donald Trump put the state in the GOP column for the first time in 28 years.................................................



............Polls have her running about even in a general-election matchup with Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette, the likely GOP nominee in the race to replace term-limited Republican Gov. Rick Snyder...................

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