July 21, 2020
NEWS & NOTES
From the nation's leading source on all things women and politics.
Debbie Walsh Moderating Moms in the House Caucus Event
Tomorrow, July 22nd, Debbie Walsh will moderate a suffrage centennial forum with members of the  Moms in the House Caucus , an informal congressional caucus of women members with young children, as well as academics and political practitioners. The event, Political History & Power of Moms, will be livestreamed on the Facebook pages of Representatives  Rashida Tlaib  and  Debbie Wasserman Schultz  from 8:30am to 10am tomorrow; attendees are encouraged to RSVP to  Emma Zafran  in the office of Rep. Wasserman Schultz.
CAWP Women Elected Officials Database Demonstration 
Weren't able to catch our webinar demonstrating how to use CAWP's brand-new Women Elected Officials Database? Watch the video recording of the demo on YouTube and see CAWP experts walk through the database's functions. The CAWP Women Elected Officials Database has entries for every woman to serve in congressional, statewide elected executive, and state legislative offices - more than 11,000 officeholders stretching back 127 years. This volume of data can seem daunting, so learn from the team at CAWP how to put the database to work in finding, refining, and exporting information for your research...or curiosity.
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Repu blican Women are Breaking Barriers this Year. Here's the Context.  
In a new piece on our Election Analysis blog, CAWP Research Associate Claire Gothreau provides an update for Republican women in U.S. House contests in the 2020 elections. GOP women have broken records for House candidate filing and general-election nominations, and Gothreau goes deeper into the data to analyze their proportion among all women candidates in 2020 and historically, as well as their win rates in primaries compared to Democratic women and men of both parties. The piece closes with an analysis of women House nominees in 2020 contests in the context of their districts' partisan lean to examine their chances of success in November.
Results from Recent Primaries
Primaries were held over the last two weeks in New Jersey and Maine, as well as run-off contests in Texas and Alabama. Here are some key outcomes for women candidates:
  • In NJ-02, Amy Kennedy won the Democratic primary and will challenge incumbent Representative Jeff Van Drew in November. Van Drew was elected to his seat during the 2018 midterms running as a Democrat but has since switched parties and won the Republican nomination in 2020.
  • Incumbent freshman Representative Mikie Sherrill (D), who was unopposed in her primary, will face Republican nominee Rosemary Becchi in the NJ-11 general election in a woman vs. woman contest. Learn more about this year's woman vs. woman races, and these contests through history, here.
  • Representative Bonnie Watson Coleman (D), the first and only woman of color to represent New Jersey in the U.S. Congress, won her primary in NJ-12 and is strongly favored to win re-election in the fall. She is also the only woman of color to win a major-party nomination for U.S. House from New Jersey in 2020.
  • Sara Gideon (D) won the Democratic nomination to challenge incumbent Senator Susan Collins (R), who was unopposed in her bid for the Republican nomination for re-election. This all-woman contest is currently rated as a toss-up by Cook Political Report.
  • Last week, Candace Valenzuela (D) won the Democratic nomination for the open seat in Texas' 24th congressional district; Beth Van Duyne (R) secured the Republican nomination for TX-24 outright in the original March primary. This all-woman contest is currently rated as a toss-up by Cook Political Report. If successful in November, Valenzuela will be the first Afro-Latina to serve in the U.S. Congress.
  • MJ Hegar won the Democratic nomination to challenge incumbent Senator John Cornyn (R) in November. This contest is currently rated as "Likely Republican" by Cook Political Report.
  • More than 50% of the women U.S. House nominees from Texas this year are women of color.
  • With nominations yet to be decided in many states, there are already 32 all-woman congressional (U.S. House or Senate) contests now set for November. The current record high for all-woman congressional contests in a single cycle is 33, set in 2018.
Full context about women in the 2020 elections, including candidate lists, summaries, results from previous primaries, and historical comparisons, are available via CAWP's Election Watch.
Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics Research
Our friends at the Carrie Chapman Catt Center for Women and Politics at Iowa State University released new research about gender balance in Iowa's county and municipal boards and commissions. The Gender Balance Project examines the impacts of the Iowa legislature requiring that all county and municipal boards and commissions be gender-balanced and whether that balance has been achieved. Read the full report here.
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Center for American Women and Politics
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