Primary Season Heats Up

May 10, 2022

NEWS & NOTES

From the nation's leading source on all things women and politics.

Updates from the 2022 Primaries

Spring has arrived and with it a surge of primary contests in this year’s midterm elections. Last week, primaries were held in Indiana and Ohio. Here are some key results from last week’s races:

Indiana has the potential to pick up seats for Republican women in the U.S. House, including open-seat nominee and former State Senator Erin Houchin (R) in IN-09 and challenger Jennifer-Ruth Green (R) in IN-01. If successful in November, Green – who identifies as Black and Asian – would be the first Asian American woman to represent Indiana in Congress. Both incumbent women – Representatives Jackie Walorski (R) and Victoria Spartz (R) – are strongly favored to win re-election in November.
In Ohio, Nan Whaley (D) and Cheryl Stephens (D) have the potential to become the first women to serve concurrently as governor and lieutenant governor of a U.S. state if they successfully challenge incumbent Governor Mike DeWine (R) and Lieutenant Governor John Husted (R) in the state's general election in November. If the Democratic ticket is successful, Whaley will be the first woman elected as governor of Ohio. (Nancy Hollister (R), who was lieutenant governor, served as governor for 11 days when her predecessor took a U.S. Senate seat and the successor had not yet been sworn in.) Stephens would also be the first Black woman Democrat elected statewide in Ohio.
While Ohio incumbent Representatives Joyce Beatty (D) and Shontel Brown (D) are strongly favored to win re-election in Ohio’s general election in November, Representative Marcy Kaptur (D) – the longest-serving woman in the U.S. House – is competing in a general election contest considered a toss-up due to redistricting.
Both major-party nominees in the open-seat contest in OH-13 are women – State Representative Emilia Sykes (D) and Madison Gesiotto Gilbert (R) – all but ensuring a new woman in Ohio’s U.S. House delegation.

Find full results from last week, including women’s share of major-party nominees, on CAWP’s Election Analysis page. Following today’s primaries in Nebraska and West Virginia? Follow CAWP on Twitter tonight for all the latest election results for women candidates.

TOMORROW: New Research Media Event on Political Violence Against Mayors

Tomorrow, Wednesday, May 11th at 2pm ET, the team behind the CAWP Research Grant project The U.S. Mayors Survey: Psychological Abuse and Physical Violence – The Longitudinal Perspective will present new research in a virtual media event, “An Assault on Local Democracy: New Findings on Political Violence Against Mayors.” Their forthcoming research report finds that, “although political violence against mayors is common, women mayors and mayors of color face more frequent and acute incidents of political violence.”

Help the First (and only) Woman Governor of New Jersey Join the NJ Hall of Fame!

Voting is open for the New Jersey Hall of Fame Class of 2022 and Christine Todd Whitman is on the ballot. Whitman became the first, and to date only, woman to serve as governor of New Jersey after being elected in 1993. She was re-elected in 1997, and left office in 2001 when she was appointed to the Cabinet of President George W. Bush as the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Following her service in government, Whitman published a book, It's My Party, Too: Taking Back the Republican Party... And Bringing the Country Together Again and continues to advocate for political moderation and cooperation. As a pathbreaker in the Garden State and in the nation at large – she is one of the first 15 women to serve as an American governor and only the second Republican woman to win election to a gubernatorial office – she deserves her place in the New Jersey Hall of Fame.

Vote here.

CAWP in the News

Stay Connected:

Share This Email