Person-to-person contact has helped female candidates sweep the state's elections this season.
New Hampshire, long known as the
first-presidential-primary-in-the-nation state, scored another political
first earlier this week: it has elected women to all of its top public
offices. It's not an accident that come January 2013, women will be
installed in New Hampshire's U.S. Senate seats, both U.S. House seats,
and the gubernatorial mansion. As anyone who has seen clips of
presidential hopefuls chatting up voters in Concord during the
presidential primary can vouch, elections there are waged mostly through
person-to-person contact. And as it turns out, retail politics play to
women's strengths.
That's because, historically at least, the women who launched
political careers were often already active in their communities. As
Debbie Walsh, head of the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP)
at Rutgers University, puts it, "women have often run to fix
something." The incoming New Hampshire governor, Maggie Hassan, for
example, got involved in public life as an advocate for her child with
special needs. One of the re-elected congressional representatives,
Carol Shea-Porter, was a social worker and community activist before she
first ran for the House in 2006. The networks these women built up in
PTA and town-hall meetings were launching pads to a political life.
That is a particularly useful background to have in New Hampshire
because serving in public office there can be tantamount to volunteer
work. The New Hampshire state legislature is the largest in the country
-- in fact, it's the third largest in the world, after the U.S. Congress
and British Parliament. Each member represents roughly 3,000 residents,
a representative-to-voter ratio that ensures elections are largely won
through meeting and personally persuading individual voters. The pay is
just $100 a term, so a lot of family breadwinners (who tend to be male)
are dissuaded from running. And the legislature doesn't meet year-round,
so it can be a good fit for mothers attempting to balance a political
career with child rearing. As a result, women have long been well
represented in that chamber and in the state senate, which in 2008
became the first to have a majority-female legislative body. (Men have
since regained their edge.) It was in the state senate that Hassan and
Senator Jeanne Shaheen began their political careers.
When women start occupying a critical mass of local political
positions, it can help normalize the idea of women in more senior
positions of power. "Once people get used to seeing women in local
office," says Elizabeth Ossoff, director of research St. Anselm's New
Hampshire Institute of Politics, "it's not so strange to see women
moving into the U.S. Congress, governors seat, and the U.S. Senate."
Female politicians who have established themselves in public life often
serve as mentors to up-and-comers, much as men have guided their
protégés over the years. Donna Sytek, the former New Hampshire speaker
of the House, recalls how the first female state Senate president, Vesta
Roy, not only encouraged her to run but also took care of her daughter
while Sytek made her first campaign calls. And Hassan was first
appointed to public office by then-Gov. Shaheen, who made her a citizen
adviser for the Advisory Committee to the Adequacy in Education and
Finance Commission.
Another part of the New Hampshire political landscape that benefits
women is the fact that television time isn't all-important in such a
small state, unlike places such as Illinois or New York. That means the
monetary bar to running is lower. And because women have traditionally
lagged men in fundraising, that can help level the playing field for
them too.
Given all of the factors working in favor of the
woman-volunteer-turned-politician, it's not surprising that the Granite
State was the first to elect an all-woman slate to higher office. Over
time, though, women are likely to achieve higher levels of political
representation even in states that don't have the same tradition of
retail politicking.
That's because the younger generation of women politicians have CVs
more similar to their male counterparts' than the community-activist
women who first won election to high office. The community-based path
was common in the prior generation of female politicians: Madeleine
Kunin became Vermont's first female governor in 1984 after commencing
her political career by campaigning for sidewalks in her neighborhood;
former Oregon governor Barbara Roberts entered public life initially to
advocate for better public school options for her autistic son. Of the
New Hampshire group, Shaheen, Shea-Porter, and Hassan all put time in
behind the scenes and as activists before becoming elected office
holders.
The youngest of the New Hampshire female politicians, U.S. Senator
Kelly Ayotte, 44, took an alternative route to higher office, however.
She worked her way up through the ranks as a prosecutor before being
appointed state attorney general. That linear path is more traditionally
associated with male politicians. But it's becoming increasingly common
with women, too. Former Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm also served
as a prosecutor before becoming state AG. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand
(D-New York) worked at a corporate law firm and was a prodigious
fundraiser before she was elected to the U.S. House. House Rep. Debbie
Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) first won election to the state house when
she was just 26.
It's not an accident that these are the women who are talked about as
potential national candidates (with the exception of Granholm, who is
ineligible because she was born in Canada). Getting in the political
game earlier helps expand their opportunities, and they've benefited
from the glass-breaking of the prior generation. If one of the younger
crew does indeed win election on a national ticket, the path the blazed
for them by the activists-turned-public-servants will have played a
vital role in their rise.
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