Women Wage Key Campaigns for Democrats

March 24, 2006
Women Wage Key Campaigns for Democrats
By ROBIN TONER
Copyright by The New York Times
NARBERTH, Pa. ˜ If the Democrats have their way, the 2006 Congressional elections will be the revenge of the mommy party.

Democratic women are running major campaigns in nearly half of the two dozen most competitive House races where their party hopes to pick up enough Republican seats to regain control of the House. Democratic strategists are betting that the voters' unrest and hunger for change ˜ reflected consistently in public opinion polls ˜ create the perfect conditions for their party's female candidates this year.

"In an environment where people are disgusted with politics in general, who represents clean and change?" asks Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. "Women."

Republicans, who have prospered in recent elections by running as the guardians of national security and clearly hope to do so again, dismiss this theory. But it will ultimately be tested in places like this Philadelphia suburb, where Lois Murphy, a 43-year-old lawyer and Democratic activist, lost a Congressional campaign in 2004 by just two percentage points.

This time, as she challenges the same Republican incumbent, Representative Jim Gerlach, Ms. Murphy said in an interview in her campaign headquarters in Narberth, she senses an electorate that is "really, really" ready for change, tired of the ethics scandals, and convinced "that their government has been letting them down."

On whether her sex is a particular asset this year, Ms. Murphy replied, "I leave that to the political experts, which I am not."

But Ms. Murphy said that her agenda ˜ ethics reform, fiscal responsibility, affordable health care, more sensitivity to the environment ˜ was connecting with moderates in both political parties.

In another high-profile race, an open seat in Illinois's Sixth District in the Chicago suburbs, L. Tammy Duckworth, a former Army helicopter pilot who lost both legs in Iraq, locked up the Democratic nomination in a narrow primary victory on Tuesday ˜ over another woman.

"It's about change on so many levels," said Ms. Duckworth of her campaign, which she said would focus heavily on the need to improve and expand health care. "If being a woman underscores that, makes it clear that I'm going to be an effective agent of change, that's great."

By the time it is over, this midterm election may offer some hints on the kind of climate that awaits Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York if she runs for president in 2008. At a time when voters have grown accustomed to women as secretary of state, House minority leader, governor (there are currently eight) and the like, this year's campaign could provide insight into the power of gender stereotypes that have been charted by scholars and political experts over many years.

In the 435-seat House of Representatives, there are 67 women, 43 of them Democrats, 24 Republicans.

The seats for which Democratic women are running this year are among the 24 held by Republicans that are classified by the Cook Political Report, an independent analyst, as either "tossups" or "lean Republican" ˜ a key measure of competitiveness. That is a fluid list this early in the campaign; many candidates have yet to make it through their primaries, and many races are still in a state of flux.

But Amy Walter, who tracks House races for Cook, said, "If you look at the top Republican targets this year, the success of Democratic women candidates will be very important in determining the number of Democratic pickups."

A net shift of 15 seats to Democrats from Republicans would turn over control of the House.

For all the enthusiasm on the Democratic side, experts say this will not be another 1992-style "year of the woman," the breakthrough year when the number of women in the House and Senate jumped by more than half. There simply are not enough competitive or open seats to make that kind of change likely.

But the Center for American Women and Politics, at Rutgers, says early data suggests an increase in the number of women running for open seats this year, fueled by the Democrats, although several of these women still face contested primaries. It is far easier for challengers to win an open seat than to oust an incumbent.

"It's not about how many women are running," said Ellen Malcolm, the president of Emily's List, the Democratic women's fund-raising organization. "It's about how many women are running where they have real opportunities to win."

Moreover, Democratic strategists hope to frame these midterm races as a classic change-versus-status-quo election ˜ which, they say, makes women, running as outsiders against a "culture of corruption," the perfect messengers.

Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster working for three female House candidates this year, said, "If you want to communicate change, honesty, cleaning up Washington, not the same old good old boys in Washington, women are very good at communicating that."

Officials at the Democratic campaign committee said that along with Emily's List and other women's groups, they had made a point of encouraging and recruiting women as candidates this year.

"This didn't just happen," Mr. Emanuel said.

Republicans profess to be unworried about the new wave of female candidates for what is often described, sometimes disparagingly, as the "mommy party." (Supposedly, in the shorthand of political positioning, Democrats are more concerned with nurturing, caring and domestic policy, while the Republicans care more about security.)

"I'm as worried about Rahm Emanuel's women as I am about Rahm Emanuel's vets," said Carl Forti, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, referring dismissively to another group of candidates Democrats have focused on this year.

Mr. Forti argued that "in our strategy every race is local, based on local issues," and he added, "It doesn't matter whether the candidate is man, woman, green, purple, orange, red, whatever."

That approach is echoed by Mark Campbell, political director of the Gerlach campaign in Pennsylvania, who said of his race, "It will be a competitive campaign, and Jim Gerlach will ultimately win because his position on important issues more closely reflects the voters of the Sixth District than Ms. Murphy's."

As for her sex, Mr. Campbell said, "I think anyone who would vote for Lois Murphy because she's a woman would vote for her just because she's the Democrat running."

In recent weeks, the Gerlach and the Murphy campaigns have been pushing competing ethics plans and trading accusations over who is truly committed to the cause.

Linda DiVall, a longtime Republican pollster who has worked for many female candidates, also notes that sex stereotypes cut both ways among voters. For example, female candidates are often seen as vulnerable on national security, Ms. DiVall said, which could be a problem in a post-Sept. 11 world. Ms. Lake, the Democratic pollster, said the sex advantages (like honesty) and disadvantages (competence on foreign policy) have grown more marginal.

"They're not as new as they used to be," Ms. Lake said of women in politics.

Republicans have some high-profile women running for Congress this year, notably Martha Rainville, who stepped aside as adjutant general of the Vermont National Guard to seek her state's lone House seat.

But this year's candidates are disproportionately Democrats, part of a longstanding trend, said Kathleen Dolan, political scientist and author of "Voting for Women: How the Public Evaluates Women Candidates."

Among the most closely watched Democratic women this year are Diane Farrell, challenging Representative Christopher Shays in Connecticut; Gabrielle Giffords and Patty Weiss, vying for the Democratic nomination for an open seat representing the Tucson area; Patricia Madrid, the New Mexico attorney general challenging Representative Heather A. Wilson; Ms. Duckworth, the Iraqi war veteran, seeking the open seat outside Chicago; Francine Busby, running for the California seat left vacant by the bribery conviction of former Representative Randy Cunningham, and Ms. Murphy, challenging Mr. Gerlach in Pennsylvania.

Emily's List, which essentially recommends female candidates who support abortion rights to its 100,000 members, reports a much heavier roster of House races than it carried two years ago. Getting recommended by Emily's List, whose members were responsible for $10 million in donations in 2004, is a major help to a campaign, candidates say.