Stagnation Nation: Women’s Wins in Political Races Fail to Accelerate

I’d been blogging for nearly a year and a half when the November 2006 elections turned Ohio blue (Democrats took four of the five state offices and former Congressman/now U.S. Senator from Ohio, Sherrod Brown, dethroned incumbent Republican Mike DeWine). In the course of that time, I threw my first house party ever, for then-candidate and now award-winning Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner, and I observed up close and personal how support from EMILY’s List – for both Brunner and then-candidate now Congresswoman Betty Sutton (who won the race to fill Brown’s seat in the Ohio 13th) could make a difference.

But I didn’t learn about efforts like the White House Project (WHP) – a non-partisan organization that seeks to get women “into the pipeline” of elected offices and positions of leadership – until just before the elections ended. Sometime before then, I’d signed up for SheSource.org, a service that seeks to place women where currently we see, overwhelmingly, men as so-called experts (think talking head shows on cable and broadcast and talk radio). One of the e-mails I received just before election day listed Marie Wilson, founder of WHP, as someone who would be available for interviews the day after the mid-term elections, to talk about how female candidates had fared.

I’m a sucker for primary source blogging material and thought this would be a great and unique angle. What I didn’t expect was for my three-post interview of Wilson (here, here and here) to lead to me being on the steering committee for Ohio’s own Go Run! training program, which took place in June 2008 and a permanent fixation and fascination with the efforts, achievements and struggles of women who seek political office.

I hope this post not only satiates my curiosity about how female candidates for political office fared Tuesday, but also causes others to think about a number of questions raised by examining the state of the race to fill elected offices.

Read the remainder of the full post here at BlogHer.com where I published the original piece as a Contributing Editor.