WP: A Gender Insurgency In Politics
By David S. Broder
Sunday, October 15, 2006; Page B07
Men have been making policy in Washington for as long as most of us can remember. But much of the political future rests in the hands of women.
In the narrowest terms, with Democrats needing 15 seats to capture a majority of the seats in the House of Representatives, there are 17 highly competitive districts with female candidates.
More broadly, much of the voter mobilization effort in both parties -- and their allied groups -- is aimed at women, especially those who normally vote in presidential years but skip the midterm elections.
That this election could result in placing a woman, Nancy Pelosi, in line to be speaker of the House for the first time in history only emphasizes the growing role of women in setting the political course.
Dennis Simon, a Southern Methodist University political scientist who has studied female candidates for Congress, has issued his statistics describing filings for 2006.
He reported last week that women made up 16 percent of the candidates running in this year's congressional primaries, an all-time high and the ninth consecutive election cycle in which that proportion has increased....(M)ore Democratic women are in competitive races than Republican women. There are 39 Democratic challengers to incumbents, compared with 14 Republicans. In the open seats, 12 Democratic women and six Republican women are running. Simon credits the disparity largely to the work of groups such as Emily's List....Backing these candidates is a grass-roots effort to draw more women to the polls. A number of groups, both left and right, are engaged in the campaigns. I bumped into one unusual program, sponsored by the AFL-CIO last week, called "Stirring the Pot." Small groups of women, half a dozen to two dozen, met on Tuesday evening for living-room conversations about health care, education and job security and to encourage each other to vote....
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