The Women Who Would Be Ms. Palin
By LUISITA LOPEZ TORREGROSA
Published: November 23, 2010
NEW YORK — For a while this summer and autumn, pundits and pollsters (and wishful thinkers) believed that the U.S. midterm elections might bring forth a new “year of the woman.”
Looking at the droves of female Republican and Democratic candidates who came out to run in primaries for the House of Representatives and Senate — including marquee millionaire brand names like Carly Fiorina and Meg Whitman, both Republican — it seemed easy to see a record-breaking year for women shaping up. Maybe women would score a coup as they did in 1992, when a dozen or so new Democratic, pro-abortion-rights women like Patty Murray and Barbara Boxer swept into the House and Senate.
But it didn’t happen in 2010, and now much has been made of that failure. At a glance, the numbers are discouraging to those who believe women should pull equal, or at least somewhere close. The number of women in Congress will stay at the same level as it is currently when the incoming class is sworn in in January: a total of 90, with 17 in the 100-member Senate and 73 in the 435-seat House.
Given those low percentages for women — despite the fact that female registered voters outnumber male — female activists may well throw up their hands.
There is, however, an interesting twist. The 112th Congress will have a record number of eight new Republican women, including Washington State’s first female Hispanic representative, Jaime Herrera. These women are different from established female Republican officeholders like Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins of Maine. And they are different from most of the Democratic women on Capitol Hill, who outnumber them.
Besides that fresh crop of Republican women in Congress, a fistful of female Republican candidates made electoral history three weeks ago by winning hard-fought races for governor in South Carolina, New Mexico and Oklahoma. Nikki Haley became South Carolina’s first female governor and the country’s second Indian-American governor (with Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a fellow Republican). Susanna Martinez became New Mexico’s first female governor and the first Latina governor anywhere in the United States. And Mary Fallin became Oklahoma’s first female governor.
The Republican women in Congress most clearly embody, and project, a new breed of political woman from the party: media-savvy and youthful, brash and bizarre, outspoken and flashy.
They are Sarah Palin’s political offspring. In the summer, they were famously the “mama grizzlies” of Ms. Palin’s video, coming off as ferociously protecting their cubs (American values, in Ms. Palin’s parlance) and scratching the eyes of anyone who dared attack them.
Now, in the mellowing afterglow of victory, they really don’t seem quite so fierce, favoring the seductive smile and the soft voice. They are camera-happy and quite unwilling to sit back for years waiting for seniority.
Leading the way is Michele Bachmann, not exactly a newbie since she has been serving in the House since 2007, representing a district in Minnesota. But Ms. Bachmann, who is prone to foot-in-mouth blather, is a sort of model (good and bad) for Republican congresswomen.
For one thing, voters and the news media pay attention to her. With hardly a piece of legislation to boast about, Ms. Bachmann has become a highly visible banner-carrier for the Tea Party movement. Fortified by the electoral success of Tea Party candidates on Nov. 2, she thrust herself forward to campaign for a spot in the House leadership come January. The prospective speaker, John A. Boehner, was not pleased, and other senior Republicans were aghast. Her survival instinct alive, Ms. Bachmann backed out.
But the newly elected Representative Kristi Noem, who defeated a Democratic incumbent, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin, to win South Dakota’s sole congressional seat, did get a seat at the high table. Last week, during orientation week on Capitol Hill, Ms. Noem was chosen by Mr. Boehner for the newly created freshman leadership post. Soon, she was giving her first impromptu news conference. Ms. Noem, a wife, mother, farmer, rancher, small-business owner and hunter, is drawing inevitable comparisons to Ms. Palin.
For the ex-governor of Alaska is the model. Despite some flops — notably in her home state, where Lisa Murkowski has claimed victory in the contentious battle to keep her Senate seat against Ms. Palin’s favored (male) candidate, Joe Miller — Ms. Palin proved she could be a key patron.
Many of the conservative Republican women who have skyrocketed into America’s consciousness lately are compared to Ms. Palin — outspoken, ambitious, attractive.
Ms. Haley, the governor-elect of South Carolina, owes Ms. Palin big time. When few voters and pundits were paying attention to this relatively obscure Indian-American in a state not known for diversity in politics, Ms. Palin zoomed in, gave her a public endorsement that Tea Party enthusiasts embraced and helped her become a national figure.
It is no surprise that Ms. Palin has brought forth a new breed of female Republican politician.
As a leader in a post-feminist generation, she has set the agenda, and the pace. She has shaped a campaign strategy that follows no clear model. She dominates all media platforms all the time.
Nate Silver, a political statistician who writes the FiveThirtyEight blog for The New York Times, of which the International Herald Tribune is the global edition, calculated that Ms. Palin draws as much search traffic worldwide as Barack Obama. “If and when Ms. Palin declares her candidacy for the White House,” Mr. Silver wrote on Nov. 19, “it could consume much of the media oxygen literally for months.”
But she seems to be doing that already. And, in her wake, the new breed of Republican women hopes to follow suit.
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