Winning For Women? Gender and the GOP in the Trump Era
“The next generation needs smart, strong women to be role models and show that there is nothing women cannot achieve with hard work and a strong support system” proclaims the Winning For Women Action Fund’s website. Hearing its name, one might assume that WFW is one of the many liberal PACs like EMILY’s List and Get Her Elected working toward gender parity in congress. But WFW is different; it works to elect Republican women. Despite the bootstraps-American-dreamlike optimism of its website, there are structural impediments to GOP women winning congressional seats even with “hard work and a strong support system,” and even with the help of PACs like WFW.
Take Dr. Joan Perry for instance, who ran in North Carolina’s Third District in a special election to replace the deceased Rep. Walter Jones. Despite being backed by WFW, former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, Rep. Joni Ernst of Alaska, and Jones’ widow herself Perry lost to Dr. Greg Murphy in a primary runoff. Both Perry and Murphy are anti-choice, both are Republican, and both are physicians. What, then, differentiated the two in the eyes of voters? The House Freedom Caucus did spend a whopping 240,000 dollars on Murphy’s campaign. Make no mistake, though: this massive sum of money was not the reason for Murphy’s edge. WFW poured more than three and a half times that amount into Perry’s run. Clearly, neither message nor money gave Murphy the leg up. As much as Republicans protest to the contrary, we are left with gender as the deciding factor.
Rep. Mark Meadows, a member of the Freedom Caucus which backed Murphy, claimed that the loss was not a referendum on gender, but rather a contest between the political establishment and the Freedom Caucus. Interestingly, Murphy had deep ties with North Carolina Republicans whereas Perry was new to politics. This pesky detail undermines Meadows’ analysis. Not to mention the fact that being a political outsider helped many officials, including our current president, win elections.
Rep. Elise Stefanik NY-21 has started her own organization in the vein of WFW called Elevate PAC (E-PAC, for short). She is one of only a handful of GOP women willing to take on gender bias in her own party -- to an extent. Following Perry’s loss she reflected, “To pigeonhole female Republicans into a certain ideological mold is wrong, and it’s sexist.” Although she would never acknowledge it, this statement is a reflection of a phenomenon of which Republicans often accuse Democrats: identity politics. Stefanik readily admits that the identity of a candidate explicitly motivated voters to choose -- or in this case not to choose -- her. In addition to gender bias, Republican women also face demographic challenges: there are simply fewer Republican women voters. Even if women run with the GOP, their minority status within the party makes it even harder to get elected. Rather than focus on discovering the root cause of this demographic imbalance, E-PAC and WFW focus on propelling women forward within the existing male-dominated framework.
George Washington University Political Science Professor Corrinne McConnaughy had a novel take on the issue, theorizing that the “Democratic brand” is “feminized to include issues that are consistent with feminine traits of compassion and nurturing — things like health care, education.” This phenomenon further hurts Republican women candidates who are seen as inappropriate spokespeople for the messaging of the party. Clearly, gender bias extends beyond the identities of the candidates and into the issues themselves.
Democratic and Republican women alike struggle with how best to deal with this reality in their campaigns, be them for regional or national office. Kirsten Gillibrand notably foregrounds her identity as a mother and a wife, whereas Elizabeth Warren references her experiences as a woman and a working mother only in the context of policy proposals. Neither approach seems more advantageous, and both women consistently win in their home districts.
In the case of Republican women, on the other hand, most successful candidates attempt to erase their gender in the eyes of voters. For example, Chair of the House Budget Committee Tennessee Rep. Diane Black asks that her colleagues call her “chairman” rather than “chairwoman.” Similarly, Rep. Marsha Blackburn prefers the title “congressman.” There are, however, a number of exceptions who emphasize their family life and their femininity so as not to intimidate male voters.
Part of the genius of WFW is its strategic choice only to support women who run on a platform of increased military spending and deregulatory economic policies. They foreground the issues seen as least “feminine” in order to reassure Republicans, albeit implicitly, that women can be strong in spite of their gender. It is not, and does not purport to be, a feminist organization. In fact, the words “Women’s Empowerment” appear nowhere on their home page. Only after a few clicks does one land on their views on gender.
WFW seeks to diversify the type of person delivering a Republican message, but not the message itself. In other words, it hands women the reigns but asks that they not leave behind their fingerprints. While one could argue that liberal PACs like EMILY’s List do the same in only supporting pro-choice women, their mission is explicitly about the way that women use their identity to shape poltiical messaging and innovate forms of leadership.
Whether female candidates deny their femininity to appeal to masculine notions of power or emphasize it to avoid being painted as ball-busting man-haters, their gender is equally prominent. By staking their campaigns in the irrelevance of their gender, Republican women prove that gender is preeminently relevant.
Sources
Astor, Maggie. “'It Can't Be Worse': How Republican Women Are Trying to Rebuild.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 9 July 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/07/09/us/politics/republican-women-congress.html.
Bacon, Perry. “Why The Republican Party Elects So Few Women.” FiveThirtyEight, FiveThirtyEight, 25 June 2018, fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-the-republican-party-isnt-electing-more-women/.
Bade, Rachael. “'A Difficult Situation': Republican Women Run in the Trump Era.” POLITICO, 25 July 2018, www.politico.com/story/2018/07/19/republicans-women-trump-midterms-731615.
Davis, Julie Hirschfeld. “A Battle of the Sexes in North Carolina Fuels a Wider Republican Clash.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 7 July 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/07/07/us/politics/north-carolina-republican-women.html.
Davis, Julie Hirschfeld. “Joan Perry's Defeat in G.O.P. Primary Points Up Party's Gender Woes.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 10 July 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/07/10/us/politics/republicans-women.html.
“Women's Empowerment.” Winning For Women, winningforwomen.com/womens-empowerment/.