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| Hillary Clinton...Madame President? |
This site is a 2016-free zone, for the most part. I think it’s ridiculous that less than
a year after President Obama has won a second term, with bills regarding
immigration, agriculture, the debt ceiling, Syria, and about a hundred other
topics all lounging about the Congress, it’s foolish to start talking about an
election three years in advance (doesn’t it make you want to vomit when pundits
say we won’t be able to get anything done in Congress until the next election,
since we just had one?!?)
But occasionally a topic comes that is relevant and related to the
presidential campaign, and I figured it might as well be our Friday rant, as it
has been bothering me for weeks.
In discussions regarding the next Democratic nominee for President, we
frequently hear about Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, with names like Andrew
Cuomo, Martin O’Malley, and Mark Warner thrown out with some frequency. We also hear about Sens. Kirsten
Gillibrand, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar with a solid amount of
repetition, though always with the caveat that they wouldn’t run unless Hillary
passes (Note: this article’s dealing
with the Democratic side principally, but I do want to note that with people
like Condi Rice, Kelly Ayotte, Susana Martinez, and of course Sarah Palin all
possibilities in 2016, this applies to the other side of the aisle as well).
That caveat, the “if Hillary passes” clause makes a good deal of sense
on the surface of things. Hillary
Clinton has broken down myriad barriers for women in her lifetime. As a first lady, senator, major
presidential candidate, and Secretary of State, she is a role model for
countless women, including a number of up-and-coming Democratic
politicians. As a result, many
people may defer out-of-respect: “if she wants it,” the thought process goes,
“shouldn’t she be afforded the right to be the first female president?”
But this thought that prominent female politicians will defer to
Hillary comes with a less savory, sexist side: the Veep discussion. When Hillary’s potential running mates
are discussed, O’Malley and Warner’s names come up with stunning frequency, but
another female candidate is nowhere to be found. This makes sense for Gillibrand (who is from Hillary’s home
state, a constitutional violation), but Warren, with her progressive
credentials, if you discount her gender, would make a lot of sense-she’s got a
lot of the young liberal fire that Clinton will need to turn out the base. A wildly popular two-term senator from
the Midwest also makes sense, but no one is thinking about the possibility of a
Clinton/Klobuchar ticket. Women
like Janet Napolitano, Claire McCaskill, and Kay Hagan all add significant
biographical and geographical advantages to a Clinton candidacy, but the idea
of an all-female ticket seems to have been nixed completely by the political
community at large.
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| The Only Two Women to Ever Be on a National Ticket: Rep. Geraldine Ferraro and Governor Sarah Palin |
Why is this, though? After
all, we’ve gone over 200-years without the need for a gender balance with
all-male tickets. The first part
of the problem is simple, but opens up another can of worms: no woman has ever
been elected on either side of the ticket, much less on both sides. We’ve never had a major female
candidate on the top of a Republican or Democratic ticket. Only two women (Geraldine Ferraro and
Sarah Palin) have ever even been on a major ticket, and both failed miserably
in their pursuit to become the first female Vice President. Women have made great strides in our
country when it comes to winning almost every other office. 26 states have elected a female
governor. Another 26 have elected
a female senator. 46 states have
sent women to the U.S. Congress (sadly, Mississippi and Iowa have none of these
three things-keep that in mind, potential Staci Appel-voters in the Hawkeye
State). Women have held all but
three posts in a presidential cabinet (Defense, Treasury, and Veterans Affairs
are the hold-outs). Three women
currently sit on the Supreme Court.
And we’ve even had a female Speaker of the House. But somehow, this glass ceiling has
proven impossible to break until recently.
So perhaps I’m asking for too much when it comes to an all-female
national ticket. Perhaps I should
start on a local level. Despite
women being elected in increasingly strong numbers as both governors and
lieutenant governors, an all-female ticket has never been elected, and only three
have ever run as general election candidates for a major party:
-In 1994, Dawn Clark Netsch ran with State Sen. Penny Severns for the
Democrats but lost by a landslide 29-points to incumbent Govenor Jim Edgar in
Illinois.
-In 1999, Republicans in Kentucky nominated Peppy Martin and Wanda
Cornelius for the GOP ticket, and they got trounced by 39-points in a race
against Gov. Paul Patton.
The third race is, oddly enough, going on right now. In New Jersey, State Sen. Barbara Buono
and Union Leader Milly Silva are running for governor of New Jersey. With Netsch’s 29-point loss in 1994 as
the threshold to beat, they’ll almost certainly come closer than any other
all-female team to taking the governorship of a state, but polls show that they
are well behind Gov. Chris Christie, and are likely to be just an historical footnote.
To be fair, Edgar, Patton, and Christie were wildly popular heading
into their elections, and there may have been no one in their home states that
could have beaten them. It wasn’t
like these were gadfly candidates-Netsch held statewide office when she ran and
Buono is a longtime state senator.
But that wasn’t going to be enough to win those races.
So the question becomes-is this something that is simply not important
to people? It’s difficult to see
even ten years from now there being a one-sided gender ticket for the
presidency. Sarah Palin did a lot
of things, many of them not good, but she did, in the brief moments following
the announcement of her candidacy, prove that there is an enormous appetite for
a woman on a national stage (remember, she basically tied up the race for
McCain before the Charlie Gibson/Katie Couric interviews). Most states have some sort of gender
balance between governors and lieutenant governors (Minnesota, for example, has
had a gender balance in the statehouse for thirty years straight).
But male/male tickets continue to persist, and because of that fact, I
feel like this is a ceiling that needs to be addressed, because it’s a double
standard that has to be shattered.
Only counting where the governor and lieutenant governor are elected as
unit, 14 states have all male tickets currently serving in these offices, and
no one bats an eye. There needs to
be a successful all-female ticket to prove that the opposite is not only true,
but also to continue to open the door for women in politics. With 2014 looking to be a banner year
for female gubernatorial candidates (the Democrats, for starters, look likely
to nominate women in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Massachusetts, amongst other
places), the time could not be sooner.
And now, I’ll turn this over to you-what are your thoughts on the
limited success of all-female gubernatorial tickets? Do you think that a hypothetical Clinton/Klobuchar (or
Palin/Bachman) ticket would be successful on a national stage? Share in the comments!
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