Daily Record

Record number of women win seats

By AP from dailyrecord.com on the Web, November 7, 2007

TRENTON, N.J. -- A record number of women will be in the state Legislature come January.

Women gained two Senate seats in Tuesday's election, bringing the number of female senators to nine, and were poised to pick up at least nine seats in the Assembly.  The gains mean female lawmakers will comprise more than a quarter of the Legislature when it reconvenes in January.

"It' huge," said an almost giddy Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University.  "There has been a concerted effort on the part of a lot of people, as well as efforts by the parties and women's organizations, to try to do something to turn this around."

The banner election year for female candidates in New Jersey started with at least 64 women seeking state Senate and Assembly seats; it was unclear from election paperwork and the person's name whether another candidate was a man or a woman.

New Jersey has long endured the dubious distinction of being one of the lowest-ranked states when it comes to the number of women in the Legislature.  As recently as 2005, less than 16 percent of the Senate and Assembly were comprised of women — about the same percentage as in 1927, according to Women Advocating for Good Government, a group dedicated to getting more women elected.

This year, a combination of retirements, resignations and more women being nominated led up to the record number of women winning seats.

"One thing that has been serving as a gatekeeper for women in past elections was incumbency," said Brigid C. Harrison, a political science and law professor at Montclair State University.  "With the number of retirements and resignations there was the chance for women to make tremendous gains.  The parties actually saw that and nominated women to seats they could win."

One example is Dana Redd, a Camden City councilwoman tapped by the state Democratic Party to run for the seat vacated by Democratic incumbent Wayne Bryant, who awaits trial on federal corruption charges.  Redd beat her male Republican challenger easily, 63 to 37 percent.

"It's interesting that the party got behind her," said Ingrid Reed, director of the New Jersey Project at Rutgers University's Eagleton Institute of Politics.  "That's really unusual — selecting a woman to run for a safe seat."

Harrison agreed.  In prior years the few women who got the nod from party bosses were put up as "sacrificial lambs — and they'd lose to entrenched incumbents," she said.

Women claimed or reclaimed Senate seats in nine of the state's 40 legislative districts on Tuesday.

The state's most visible Senate race featured two women, incumbent Sen. Ellen Karcher and Assemblywoman Jennifer Beck.  In conceding to the Republican challenger late Tuesday, Karcher said knew that come January her husband "was looking forward to having his wife back."

The races for 80 Assembly seats feature 48 women candidates, including 14 incumbents and 42 from the two major parties.  At least 24 women were elected or re-elected.

Before Tuesday's election, there were 23 women in the 120-member state Legislature — 7 senators and 16 assembly.

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