Banner Year for Female Candidates Doesn’t Extend to Republican Women
Not only did new groups focused on reclaiming Congress for the midterms, such as Swing Left and Indivisible, spring up after 2016, women running for office could rely on a powerful network of established organizations, like Emily’s List and Emerge America, dedicated to recruiting, training and funding Democratic candidates. Republicans have no comparably longstanding and well-endowed groups.
“On the left, groups have recognized that women often have more hurdles to overcome on the road to political office,” Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster, said. “Democrats have, for decades, built infrastructure to support women candidates in overcoming those hurdles. Republicans have let the chips fall where they may.”
The firepower is lopsided. Emily’s List, which endorses and finances Democratic women who support abortion rights, said it raised $110 million this election cycle and has raised more than $600 million since it was founded in 1985. Value in Electing Women, one of the analogues for Republican women, has raised $4.5 million since it was founded in 1997, according to its website.
Value in Electing Women and other organizations dedicated to recruiting, training, or funding Republican women to run for office, such as Maggie’s List, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. Representative Elise Stefanik, Republican of New York, who led the National Republican Congressional Committee’s efforts to recruit women for the House, declined a request for an interview.
Whitney Smith, who ran for state and county office as a Republican in Ohio and owns a consulting firm that specializes in female candidates, said she has worked on more than 300 campaigns. “I never, as a candidate or consultant, encountered a pipeline from the Republican Party to recruit women,” she said.
Ms. Ayotte and Ms. Anderson agree that Republicans need to match Democratic success in cultivating both major donors and grass-roots small donors. That is one reason Winning for Women is determined to build donor networks and has already signed up about 270,000 members in this cycle, said its executive director, Rebecca Schuller. Ms. Ayotte also wants to recruit women from a wider variety of backgrounds, including business, medicine and academics.