February 19, 2019
NEWS & NOTES
From the nation's leading source on all things women and politics.
One Month Until Ready to Run®
CAWP's flagship Ready to Run® program in New Brunswick, NJ is less than a month away! The campaign training conference will be held from March 15th to 16th and will prepare attendees for deeper political engagement with workshops on campaign strategy, media training, fundraising, navigating New Jersey's political parties, and public presentation and speaking, among other topics.

The 2018 election saw a number of breakthroughs for women, and with six women already stepping up for the presidential election, 2020 is set to continue the momentum. Contrary to the narrative, however, 2018 wasn't a "Year of the Woman." The women who won office last year didn't come from nowhere. They spent years getting involved and working to lay the groundwork for their electoral success.

Now it's your turn.
  
Stay Up to Date on the 2019 and 2020 Elections with CAWP
*Six* women have now declared their candidacies in the Democratic primary for the 2020 presidential contest, already breaking new ground on the road to next year's elections. CAWP recently launched our election-tracking site, Presidential Watch, to provide data and analysis for the 2020 election as well as historical information on women and presidency. Get to know the women seeking the presidency, see analysis from experts on how women are shaping the campaign, and learn about the history of women running for president, from Victoria Woodhull to Hillary Clinton.

Hold up, tho. The year two-thousand-and-twenty is so far in the future but 2019 elections are right around the corner. Five states, New Jersey, Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Mississippi, are holding elections for state offices in 2019, and CAWP is tracking the women declaring their candidacies for office this year. Thus far, only Kentucky's filing deadline has passed, but CAWP has launched The Buzz 2019 list of filed and potential candidates, so keep this page bookmarked to follow the women making moves this year.

Still looking for more news about what's in store for women candidates? Greedy! But we got you. Our 2020 Buzz list tracks the women testing the waters and toying with running in next year's elections. Who's jumping into the race for that newly opened seat? Who's rumored to be eyeing a primary challenge? Who's planning a run against a long-time incumbent? Find out at The Buzz 2020.
It's only 2019 and 2020 is already here.

Help CAWP keep you informed throughout election season with a generous donation today.
  
CAWP Celebrates Black History Month 
It's Black History Month, and CAWP is celebrating the important strides women of color made in the 2018 midterms, with record numbers of women of color serving in office, at the federal and state level. CAWP has a number of resources about the political representation of women of color, from data on current levels to progress throughout history, as well as  complete lists of current officeholders sorted by how they self-identify. Learn more about the Black women and other women of color who have made history and those who are making history right now.

Also, spend some time with this Elle feature celebrating the first Black woman elected to Congress, Shirley Chisholm, with seven current congresswomen reflecting on her legacy.
Apply Now to NEW LeadershipTM 2019
Are you a New Jersey college woman ready to get more involved in politics? Know someone that fits that bill? Designed for college women, NEW Leadership TM offers practical political education as well as opportunities to engage with women currently working in politics and government. This year's New Jersey conference will take place from June 6th-11th in New Brunswick and is open to women of all majors; eligible applicants must be registered in either a two-year institutions or be a rising junior or senior at a four-year institution in New Jersey. Applications are being accepted now.

Not in New Jersey? The NEW Leadership TM national network is a partnership of colleges and universities across the country dedicated to developing women leaders. Find a program near you!




 
The Klobuchar Kickoff

Senator Amy Klobuchar became the sixth woman to enter the Democratic presidential primary last week with a launch event in a dramatically snowy tableau. For her entry, Nate Silver at 538 laid out Klobuchar's pathways to the nomination, noting her relatability, debate prowess, comfort in early nominating states, and relatively moderate position in the party. Her announcement coincided, however, with stories about her treatment of staff that cast her as critical and demanding and noted the high turnover in her office. In interviews, Klobuchar says her demands on her staff are no greater than the demands she places on herself, and the conversation around her staff immediately became an opportunity to discuss whether being a tough, demanding boss would become a negative story if the candidate were a man. In The Hill, CAWP's Kelly Dittmar raised the question of whether Klobuchar's "Minnesota nice" persona and the criticisms of her managerial style were two sides of the same gendered coin. Discussing this vein of attack, as well as the criticism of Kamala Harris based on when she listened to what music, or Kirsten Gillibrand asking the best way to eat chicken and waffles, or Elizabeth Warren's likability, Margaret Sullivan in The Washington Post asks how sexist the media coverage of women running for president will be and rules out "not at all." Likewise, on the front page of The New York Times, Maggie Astor examined sexism on the campaign trail and how having multiple women in the race might change the narrative arc of the campaign, and CAWP's Debbie Walsh tells her that having six women on the trail will "give women who run for office at every level more leeway, and a path to navigate that may be not quite so narrow."


Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

The processes of power can seem opaque to outsiders, and research shows that women work to make governing more open and transparent. Such was the case when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez discovered the widely prevalent, but peculiar, informal institution of paid line-sitting in Washington. Whether it's a critical Supreme Court case or a controversial hearing, lobbyists and other well-financed individuals and organizations pay other people to hold a spot for them in line, sometimes camping out for multiple days. It's a small way that access to witness our political process is reserved in advance by the powerful, and The Washington Post writes about Ocasio-Cortez shedding light on something taken for granted in the capital.

Meanwhile, The Lily has a story about one of Congress's best, yet little-known, places to build the sorts of informal relationships invaluable to the deal-making process: the congressional gym. Since 1985, the former men's gym, with significantly better facilities than the women's gym, has ostensibly been co-ed, though a significant barrier to women using the gym and having access to the same relationship-building potential as their male counterparts remains, as 34 years after the gym went co-ed there still is no women's locker room. It's a reminder of the myriad cascading ways that our institutions of government remain persistently unfriendly to women's access.


Dear Mama
 
"If a House speaker spent a decade of their early life as a football quarterback or Navy SEAL, those years would certainly be mined for meaning and relevance." With this premise in mind, The Washington Post undertakes a profile-by-resume of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and looks to her years spent raising five children as the source of the unique blend of skills that make her a successful politician and leader. Interviews with her children and colleagues cast her motherhood as foundational to her organizational skills, her smooth navigation of the chaos of legislation, her abilities as a negotiator, and her facility in dealing with truculent political opponents.

Speaking of motherhood- more good news from the world of campaign finance in The Times-Picayune. After initially rejecting a candidate's request to use campaign funds to pay for campaign-related childcare expenses, the Louisiana Ethics Board reversed course and allowed the application of campaign funds to childcare following an appeal to reconsider from state legislature candidate Morgan Lamandre and the Louisiana Legislature's Women's Caucus. Easing the difficult balance of campaigning while a parent is important to women's political participation, and we're looking forward to the day when this is the rule and not the exception.

 
The Galentine's Caucus

Originating on an episode of  Parks & Recreation , Galentine's Day is a response to Valentine's Day that promotes relationship building and mutual support among women, and  The Lily and  Elle have moved past the facetious beginnings of Galentine's and into earnest examinations of the power of relationships among women. The Lily looks at the long history of women's networks extending into political activism and social change, while Elle enlisted women officeholders to write Galentine's Day notes, turning the Valentine's classroom tradition into an opportunity for women to express to one another, and to readers, how building relationships is building power.
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Center for American Women and Politics
Eagleton Institute of Politics
Rutgers University | New Brunswick
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