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Elect club
Why aren't there more women in the state Legislature?
Blame county party leaders, says Christie Whitman
by Christie Whitman,
Newark Star-Ledger, Sunday, June 1, 2003
New Jersey is a great place to live, work and raise a family. But it's not such a great place for women to be elected to state office -- my own election as governor being more an exception than a rule. This is particularly apparent in the Legislature, where women occupy a disappointing 16.7 percent of the seats.
Primary election voters will go to the polls Tuesday to choose legislative candidates for the fall elections. Between the veteran Democratic women incumbents who have been dismissed by their own party organizations, and the incumbent Republican women who have party endorsement but are nonetheless facing very strong challenges, the number of women in the Legislature could dwindle.
New Jersey is 39th among all states for the number of women legislators. New Jersey has been in the bottom quarter of all states in this category since 1990.
Our ranking is particularly surprising because we live in one of the most affluent, best-educated states in America. One would assume that as the state with the highest average annual income, the state that spends more per pupil on education than any other, and a state located in the heart of the sophisticated Washington-to-Boston megalopolis, we would be among the states with the highest representation of women.
Unfortunately, that's not the case.
What kind of state elects women to only one in six available seats in the Legislature? Arkansas, Tennessee -- and New Jersey.
The number of women serving in the Legislature today is essentially the same as it was in 1927, when 15 percent of the members of New Jersey's General Assembly were women.
Seventy-five years later, it still isn't easy for women in the Legislature.
Take Republicans Connie Myers, a four-term incumbent in the Assembly, and freshman Assemblywoman Alison McHose, who find themselves in hotly contested battles to keep their seats. While these two challengers do have party backing, they're still being challenged by two of the best-financed and most-experienced campaigners in any of the state's primary contests. There is no excuse for being out-worked; shame on the woman who lets that happen. But finances are another story. Women have a long history of being far outspent by male opponents.
As unusual as those challenges are, it's far worse for Democratic women legislators. Sen. Nia Gill, who has served in the Legislature nine years, was denied the Democratic Party endorsement in her re-election bid this year. Four-term Assemblywoman Arline Friscia, of Middlesex County, suffered the same rejection by the county Democratic Party.
You've got to wonder why party leaders would think of their incumbent women legislators as disposable. My suspicion is that despite their years in the Legislature, neither Gill nor Friscia developed the kind of "old boy" network it sometimes takes to survive the rough- and-tumble of intraparty fights.
Gill and Friscia are fiercely independent and obviously fell out of favor with those who control the party in their counties.
Reluctance by county-level party leaders to seek and support women candidates has a devastating effect on the ability of women to be elected. Party support is the key to elections in New Jersey. The lack of party support for women candidates has, clearly, contributed to the absence of women in the Legislature.
It's not all gloom and doom for women candidates. There are some bright spots, the brightest being Burlington County, where both of the county's state senators -- Martha Bark and Diane Allen -- are women. How does this happen? In part, because the county chairman has made a point of recruiting women candidates for the Legislature and for supporting their candidacies with all the financial and volunteer support they need. There are other bright spots, as well, but not nearly as many as there should be.
The problem is pervasive. A few years ago the then Republican and Democratic state chairmen addressed the "Ready to Run" program at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. Their comments, if not insightful, certainly were revealing.
One of the chairmen told the assembled bipartisan group of women who were looking for campaign advice, "If you want to get elected, you should run for the school board, that's where you can really get a start." Not to be outdone, his counterpart advised those in attendance that "sometimes you women are your own worst enemies."
I don't know what that chairman had in mind, and I never got the chance to ask. To this day, it strikes me as a boorish comment. The effect on the audience was striking; eager listeners were abruptly turned off. The message was clear: If you're not getting ahead, it's your own fault.
Settling for the school board or accepting the "blame-the-women" notion is a recipe for failure, not success.
The states that dependably top the list for the number of women elected to the legislature -- places like Washington, Colorado and Arizona -- are the kind of states where there are several elected statewide offices besides governor. Women in those states have successfully run for attorney general, treasurer and secretary of state. They showed the voters, and the political establishment, that women can be elected, and once elected, can be successful. Their successes have shown political parties the value in supporting women candidates, encouraged more women to run for state office, and resulted in more women being elected to the legislatures in those states.
In New Jersey, with the governor as the only statewide elected officeholder, the same kind of opportunities don't exist, and female ranks in the Legislature suffer.
While women are woefully under-represented in the Legislature, we have made great strides in the other branches.
At the risk of stating the obvious, New Jersey did have a woman governor from 1994 through January of 2001. I was the first woman to be elected governor of New Jersey. For a while, I was the only woman governor in the country. There was no party line during the 1993 gubernatorial primary, so the effect of party support was greatly diminished. My victory in that primary was due mostly to the fact that I had run statewide for the U.S. Senate a little more than two years earlier, and because I worked harder and longer than my two male opponents.
Once in office, I put an emphasis on naming as many qualified women as I could to top state posts. My Cabinet and my principal advisers included women who were, and are, among the brightest leaders -- male or female -- to ever serve the people of New Jersey.
I appointed three women to the seven-member Supreme Court of New Jersey, including the state's first female chief justice. Gov. James E. McGreevey has announced his intention to nominate Chief Justice Deborah Poritz for another term, so our judiciary will continue to be led by a woman.
The effect of having women serve in high-profile elected positions, as well as appointed ones, is enormous. Young women who first became aware of government and politics while I was governor will never labor under the misimpression that only men can get elected governor. Women in law school today can reasonably dream that they might one day serve on the New Jersey Supreme Court. Ten years ago, those dreams would have been scoffed at.
People who see the portraits of past governors at the State House recognize that I was the first woman governor of New Jersey. They also notice that I have been the only woman governor. I'm proud to be the first, but troubled to be the "only."
I can't help but think that each woman in the Legislature feels the same way about being one of only 20.
Women's voices and life experiences are desperately needed at the center of decision-making in New Jersey, not just at the margins.
Women need to be focused and forceful in the drive to be elected to state office. They shouldn't settle for seats on the school board, and they should never believe that they are their "own worst enemies."
Christie Whitman was governor of New Jersey from 1994 to 2001. She will retire as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency later this month. |
