Allan Lichtman

President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress have come close to missing the opportunity for health care reform because they failed to heed the history of Republican obstruction on the issue. The lessons of the health care debates from 1993-1994 is that GOP cooperation cannot be expected on any health care proposal. Rather their only objective is to deliver a major defeat to the Democratic president.

Republican Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina recently said that health care “will be his [Obama’s] Waterloo.” As I noted in my book, White Protestant Nation: The Rise of the American Conservative Movement, in a 1993 strategy memo to fellow Republicans Representative Dick Armey of Texas used a similar military metaphor.

The debate over health care he said is “the Battle of the Bulge of big-government liberalism.” He wrote that Democrats were “launching a final desperate gambit to win the permanent loyalty of the great middle class through dependency on a massive new government entitlement. On the outcome of this gambit hangs the future, not only of the Republican party, but of every American citizen.” The defeat of health care reform, he presciently argued, should mean “the end of the Clinton ascendancy and the start of the Republican renaissance.”

In a blog entry this week, Republican strategist and magazine editor William Kristol advised his party to “go for the kill” on health care. Sixteen years ago, Kristol likewise urged Republicans to reject “sight unseen” any plan for health care reform developed by the Clinton administration.

The defeat of health care reform in 1993-94 was a political success for the GOP, but a disaster for the nation. During the next 16 years the American health care crisis has gone from bad to worse. Republicans gained control of both houses of Congress in the midterm elections 1994, but did nothing to promote comprehensive health care reform, an issue that President George W. Bush also let languish during his eight years in office.

Few Americans will remember the partisan alignment of votes on a health care bill. But few Americans will forget the Democrats’ failure to deliver their promises on health care reform. The Democrats should use their control of both houses of Congress to enact needed legislation regardless of Republican opposition. Otherwise the Democrats and the nation will witness a sad replay of 1994.

According to the decision in Kelo v. City of New London, Connecticut, local governments can seize your property, against your will, and turn it over to corporate developers. Officials need only to compensate owners and claim that the seizure serves some public purpose such as boosting tax revenues or
employment.

This shredding of our property rights is not as right-wing leaders would have us believe an issue of liberal versus conservative. Indeed, it is conservatives who have long insisted on judicial restraint, saying Justices should not broadly read rights into the Constitution and should defer to local governments. It is also conservatives who have been the reliable allies of corporations on issues ranging from bankruptcy to access to the courts.

Regardless of our politics, giving up our property to corporations should be as intolerable as surrendering our suffrage or free speech rights.

Rights, of course, are not absolute. With due compensation, governments can take private property into the public domain for such common purposes as building roads and reservoirs that all of us use.
But we should draw a bright line against the transfer of our property to private corporate interests, whether or not government says that a development project better serves the public interest than our homes, stores, or farms.

The same powerful corporate interests that covet your private property have the money and clout to make local officials dance to their tune. With the definition of public purpose, under the Supreme Court decision, at the discretion of government, “The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms,” Justice Sandra Day O’Connor warned in a dissenting opinion. Your government could raze your home for a shopping mall, a Wal-Mart box store, or any corporate development that promises jobs, tax revenue, tourism, etc.

As several liberal, African-American members of Congress have noted, the taking of property for corporate development is likely to impact the poor and minorities whose property has less tax value than development projects. So liberals need to get behind efforts to protect our basic American property rights.

Naive American voters still believe that they select their Congressional representatives. Texans are under no such illusion after the bitter redistricting battle that took place there. Partisan and racial gerrymandering has created a situation in Texas and across the nation, where very few U.S. Congressional seats are competitive today -- in effect allowing Congressmen to choose their voters.

U.S. House Majority Leader, Tom DeLay (R-TX), led the way for Republican Congressmen in Texas to pick their voters. The untold story of DeLay’s belligerent power grab in Texas redistricting involves partisan political domination, intrigue, alleged corruption and perhaps most significantly -- minority disenfranchisement.

U.S. Congressional redistricting takes place in state legislatures once per decade, following the decennial census to reflect population shifts, as mandated by the U.S. Constitution. Tom DeLay led the effort to violate all historical precedent by drawing the Congressional district lines in Texas -- twice.

In the first redistricting, the Texas state legislature was divided and could not agree on a plan in 2001. So, a three-judge Federal District Court drew the plan, finalizing the redistricting process, which is quite common. But the court-ordered plan did not fully guarantee that Republicans would completely dominate the U.S. Congressional delegations from Texas. So Tom DeLay decided to do it all over again mid-decade, which has never been done before.

Tom DeLay’s aides are currently under indictment for allegedly pumping illegal, corporate donations, laundered by his political action committee, into Republican state legislative races in 2002. Texas District Attorney, Ronnie Earle is looking at a possible indictment of DeLay himself on the same grounds. The obvious goal of the donations was to gain enough influence through contributions to Texas state legislators to compel them to redraw the original, court-ordered, redistricting plan.

After an epic battle, DeLay’s efforts paid off and he ultimately succeeded in securing a new plan from the Texas legislature. But first, DeLay and other Texas Republicans walked unflinching, through the scorching flames of public, media and Democratic opposition, in an attempt to eliminate 5-7 more Congressional Democrats than the original court-ordered plan required.

The Republicans disregarded the booming cacophony generated by the Texas body politic which opposed DeLay’s plan. With a total of over 200 editorials, every major newspaper in the State of Texas editorialized against redistricting. The TV coverage was more than 2-1 against his plan. The respected Texas Poll showed that only 26 percent of the Texas public thought there was a need to redraw the congressional district lines.

Thousands of people testified in statewide, public hearings about DeLay’s unprecedented plan. In Dallas County, where 200 people were expected to testify, 700 people showed-up spontaneously and stayed until 2 or 3:00 in the morning to testify. In emotional appeals, the vast majority of participants asked that time and resources be devoted to real issues that effect people’s lives -- not to a second round of redistricting.

In court testimony, Republicans in Texas, guided by DeLay’s congressional staff, brazenly admitted that they were rewriting the plan for partisan political purposes. Tom DeLay’s intention was to leave no Democratic leaders standing. He went after the most senior, capable Democratic members of the Texas Congressional delegation.

"We must stress that a map that returns (Democratic U.S. Reps. Martin) Frost, (Chet) Edwards and (Lloyd) Doggett is unacceptable and not worth all of the time invested in this project," wrote Delay aide Tom Ellis in a memo circulated among Republicans.

Tom DeLay’s efforts paid off big in the 2004 elections where he eventually gained 6 additional Congressional seats for Texas Republicans to replace a 17-15 Democratic majority in the congressional delegation with a 21-11 Republican majority. This partisan victory helped guaranteed Republican control of the U.S. Congress and the policies that go with it, well into the future.

Despite the blatant partisan gerrymandering that took place, and the negative consequences of one-party rule, the biggest casualty of the battle were minority voting rights. That is the untold story of Texas redistricting.

The Untold Story of Minority Voter Disenfranchisement in Texas

The Texas State House Democrats (the Killer D’s) secretly boarded buses from Austin Texas bound for Ardmore Oklahoma on Mother’s Day night 2003. Many did not even tell their wives where they were going. Tom DeLay used federal funds to send Homeland Security and the Federal Aviation Administration to track down the state legislators.

Most believe that the Killer D’s were trying to deny Republican a quorum required to vote on the redistricting plan because of partisan rancor. In fact the Killer D’s felt morally bound to break quorum and leave Austin because minorities were being disenfranchised and the majority Republicans, led by Tom DeLay were abusing their power. The Killer D’s went to Ardmore because they knew that a political crime was being committed in Texas and leaving the State was their last resort.

Had the Killer D’s not broken quorum and 52 members not gone to Ardmore, Tom DeLay would have gotten his way with redistricting quickly and quietly, just as he had planned. Going to Ardmore was the most important factor in allowing the time necessary to draw public and media attention to this outrageous dilution of minority voting strength. It was an extraordinary act of discipline and courage on the part of the Texas State House Democrats.

The Killer D’s knew that DeLay’s plan, which was in place for the 2004 Texas Congressional elections, was drawn so that it maximized the influence of Suburban white voters and it minimized the influence of Hispanic and black voters in both rural and urban areas. They began to see that Tom DeLay’s plan was arguably the most significant set-back in minority voting rights since the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965.

In the Dallas/Tarrant County region, home to some 640,000 African-Americans and 950,000 Hispanics, DeLay’s plan impeded opportunities for minority voters to participate fully in the political process and to elect candidates of their choice by fragmenting or cracking minority communities, thereby submerging minority voters in districts dominated by Anglo voters.

DeLay’s plan dismantled Congressional District (CD) 24 in the Dallas/Tarrant region which under the Court’s plan had a combined black and Hispanic population of 60.2 percent. The state of Texas’s own redistricting expert, Dr. Keith Gaddie, Professor of Political Science at the University of Oklahoma, admitted that the Court’s District 24 was an effective district for black voters to nominate candidates of their choice and then to elect those candidates in coalition with Hispanic voters.

Yet Delay’s plan scattered the minority voters of District 24 into five Anglo-dominated, Republican districts in which they lacked opportunities even to influence the outcomes of elections. The DeLay plan deliberately assured that these voters will be represented by members of Congress who do not share their priorities and interests.

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram noted on 10 October 2003,"East and southeast Fort Worth (in Tarrant County) are shoved into a district dominated by affluent suburbs and Denton County and extending to the Oklahoma border. This abuse of low-income, minority voters alone should cause courts to reject the map."

There is no justification of such fragmentation – not geography, preservation of whole counties or cities, preservation of senior incumbents, unification of communities of interest or retention of the cores of previous districts. To the contrary, the fragmentation of African-Americans in DeLay’s plan subverts rather than advances these criteria, demonstrating the racial intent of DeLay’s plan.

Leaders of the redistricting effort in the House and Senate likewise questioned the legality of fragmenting the black population in current CD 24. Representative Phil King (R-Weatherford), House leader of the Republican redistricting effort, withdrew from consideration in July a plan aimed at redrawing CD 24 as a Republican district. According to the Houston Chronicle,"King said he had discovered potential Voting Rights Act violations in his maps for the 18th and 25th districts in Houston and the 24th in Dallas."

DeLay’s plan makes a far more drastic reduction of the combined black and Hispanic population in CD 24, reducing it not to 51 percent, as in King’s plan, but to 26 percent. And the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported,"Rep. Phil King, R-Weatherford, said he probably goofed when he redrew the district represented by U.S. Rep. Martin Frost [D-Dallas]…King had hoped to have the map approved by the House Committee on Redistricting... But he withdrew the map from consideration until it is modified."

After withdrawing his map, King introduced a new design that restored CD 24 to its minority strength, in King’s words,"just to make sure that there was no possibility that we were in any way violating or going against the spirit of the Voting Rights Act."

Later, on the eve of passage of DeLay’s plan, which was drafted behind closed doors by the Republican leadership and again targeted CD 24, King once more raised doubts about tampering with this district, citing an opinion from consulting lawyers that the dismantling of minority opportunity District 24 could not legally be offset by augmenting the black population of a congressional district in Houston.

Thus, legislators decided on the basis of secret meetings to crack and disperse black voter strength in CD 24 even though they believed they were tampering with a district protected under the Voting Rights Act, regardless of what was done in the Houston area. Clearly intentional discrimination against African-Americans in the Dallas/Tarrant region cannot be offset by changes elsewhere in the state any more than intentional discrimination against black employees in a company’s plant in Dallas could be corrected by better treatment of black employees at its plant in Houston.

In heavily Hispanic southwest Texas, the DeLay plan dismantled Congressional District 23, an Hispanic opportunity district under the Court’s plan, with a clear Spanish surname registration majority of 55 percent. The DeLay plan deliberately split heavily Hispanic Webb County in half, removing some 90,000 Hispanics and ensuring that Congressional District 23 would elect a Republican who does not share Hispanic interests.

DeLay’s plan represents the first time, anywhere in America, that majority-minority districts have been dismantled since the Voting Rights Act was passed. Plan drawers have failed to draw minority districts in the past when they could have, but they’ve never drawn one that existed and then taken it apart.

It is certain that the legislators who crafted and adopted the plan knew full well that in using minorities as pawns in this partisan game that they had dismantled an African-American and a Hispanic opportunity district and had submerged minority voters into districts where no such opportunity exists.

DeLay’s plan also dismantled seven districts (CDs 1, 2, 4, 9, 10, 11, and 17) in which African-American and Hispanic voters play a critical role in determining the election of candidates in general elections – Anglo Democratic representatives who have faithfully represented minority interests in Congress. The minority voters in these influence districts are submerged under DeLay’s plan within heavily Republican districts – often with Republican incumbents – in which they will have no influence on the outcome of general elections and will be represented by members of Congress who do not share their priorities and interests.

The DeLay plan also maximizes racial divisions and polarization in Texas by dividing the state primarily into Anglo-dominated Republican districts and a relatively few heavily minority Democratic districts. As a result, the Texas congressional delegate now consists of 21 Anglo Republicans, 9 Hispanic or black Democrats, and only 2 remaining Anglo Democrats. It eliminates both competitive districts and districts that would encourage coalition-building between Anglos and minorities. The plan represents a grim future for Texas and for the nation if the DeLay approach to redistricting became a model for other states.

Nearly as disturbing as the deliberate minority disenfranchisement, is the fact that, if Democrats were in the majority in the U.S. Congress right now, there would be dozens of full committee and subcommittees headed by minorities, blacks or Hispanics. And that’s the basis of significant power within Congress. Under Republican control of Congress, there are no blacks and very few Hispanics. It’s what one observer called a"peculiar apartheid."

Copyright 2005 Karyn Strickler, an activist and freelance writer.

My grandmothers were not born with the right to vote in the United States of America. My mother’s was the first generation of American women whose life commenced with the right to vote.

It was only 85 years ago that women won the hard-fought battle for suffrage. The federal amendment to the U.S. Constitution for women's suffrage was not even introduced in the U.S. Congress until 1868. The amendment passed on August 26, 1920. Women fought the formal battle for suffrage for half a century. Women had to make a case to men for why they should have a right to vote.

Here's what Susan B. Anthony said in 1872, upon being convicted of voting in the Presidential election: "I stand before you tonight under indictment for the alleged crime of having voted at the last presidential election, without having a lawful right to vote. It shall be my work this evening to prove… that in thus voting, I… committed no crime, but, …simply exercised my citizen's rights, guaranteed to me and all United States citizens by the… Constitution, beyond the power of any state to deny.”

In reference to the preamble of the U.S. Constitution, Susan B. Anthony insisted, “It was we, the people; not we, the white male citizens… but we, the whole people, who formed the Union. And we formed it, not to give the blessings of liberty, but to secure them; not to the half of ourselves and the half of our posterity, but to the whole people - women as well as men. And it is a downright mockery to talk to women of their enjoyment of the blessings of liberty while they are denied the use of the only means of securing them provided by this democratic-republican government - the ballot.”

That evening, Anthony argued that in fact women were persons as defined by the Constitution and “entitled to vote and hold office.” She made a good case, but why should she have had to make a case for something that should have so obviously been every woman’s birthright as a U.S. citizen -- the right to vote? It should have been obvious that women must be full participants in the decisions made by our government -- the decisions that profoundly affected their lives.

It should be equally obvious today that women ought to be represented in elected office in proportion to their numbers in the population on the local, state and national levels -- a concept that I call gender balance in politics.

Suffrage was not simply a movement to secure women’s right to vote. It was a movement to make women full participants in society, thereby transforming society. Achieving gender balance in politics is the logical extension of the suffrage movement -- the fulfillment of the still unrealized dream of the suffrage movement. As path breaking feminist, Mary Wollstonecraft said in 1792, "Women ought to have representatives, instead of being arbitrarily governed without any direct share allowed them in the deliberations of government"

Over two hundred years later women are still arbitrarily governed with little direct share in the deliberations of government because men make up 78% of state legislatures; 85% of the U.S. House of Representatives and 86% of the U.S. Senate and about 90% of Governors.


Women as Decision Makers


Without the achievement of gender balance in politics, women will be forever in the status of petitioner, not decision maker.

Until we achieve gender balance, women will have to petition men to implement and enforce laws and societal ethics against sexual harassment, instead of deciding, as members of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee that sexual harassment will not be rewarded with a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court, as happened in the case of Clarence Thomas.

Unless we achieve gender balance, women will have to petition men to allow women access to emergency contraceptive pills -- ordinary birth control pills taken in a higher than normal dose -- without a prescription. Emergency contraception, also known as Plan B, is safe and can prevent fertilization, ovulation or implantation. It has an effectiveness rate of 75%- 89% if used within 72 hours of unprotected intercourse, after contraceptive methods fail or in the case of rape. Over-the-counter availability is necessary partly because access to contraception in most states today is abysmal.
Thirty two thousand women become pregnant each year because of rape or incest. Tragically, very few states in the United States mandate that emergency room treatment for victims include services related to emergency contraception. All women are entitled to easy access to emergency contraceptives; it's basic health care. But we’re not going to get it by petitioning men, we tried recently and we lost.
If there were more women in the U.S. Congress, the Bush Administration would not dare to weaken the protections of the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), as they have threatened to do. The Act guarantees “eligible employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid job-protected leave for a serious illness, to care for a seriously ill family member, or to care for a newborn or newly adopted child. Since 1993, more than 50 million people have taken job-protected leave, and, as a result, fewer people have had to choose between job and family,” according to the National Organization for Women.

Until women achieve gender balance, women will have to petition men to find a cure for breast cancer, the disease which takes the life of one American woman every twelve minutes.

Alice Paul submitted the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) to U.S. Congress in 1923. The first section of the ERA says: "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." The second and third sections of the ERA consist of one sentence each, saying that congress shall have the power to enforce the amendment and that it will take effect 2 years after ratification. That's the entirety of the ERA. It’s only threatening to those who want to control and impede the progress of women.

It's 2005 and the ERA is still not part of the U.S. Constitution. Unless women achieve gender balance in politics, we will have to petition men to pass the Equal Rights Amendment. We tried petitioning male-dominated state legislatures to ratify the ERA in the 1970’s and we lost. Women need to decide, as members of the U.S. Congress to revive the ERA and as members of state legislatures to ratify it in every state house across this country.

The number of women in elected office on the national level has not changed significantly in more than a quarter of a century. There were 20 women in the U.S. House in 1961 and there are 66 today. There are only 14 women in the U.S. Senate. The Center for American Women in Politics reports that, “Since the first Congress, 11,699 people have served in the House or Senate. Of these, 215 (less than 2%) have been women.” While the number of women on the state level is better, men still comprise almost 80 percent of state legislatures on the average.

History has proven repeatedly and definitively that if women want to achieve social, economic and political justice, by trying to influence men, we will not succeed. We must do so by achieving gender balance in politics.


How Gender Balance Will Change Politics


Why do religious political extremists control so much of our national public policy agenda? The answer is simple -- progressives have provided no affirmative counterpart to the Christian Coalition and other powerful, reactionary groups. While there is sporadic reaction to the agenda of religious political extremists in America, progressives are simply not setting and implementing a pro-active pubic policy agenda. Unless progressives act quickly and forcefully it may soon be too late to regain control of American politics.

The golden boy of the religious political extremists, Ralph Reed is now running for public office himself, but he left the Christian Coalition to start a firm whose focus "will be on building a farm team of state legislators, school board members and other local officeholders who, [Ralph Reed] believes hold the key to the future of our country." (Washington Post, April 24, 1997)

Their ultimate goal is control - at all levels of government. But they're starting at the local and state level because it's easier to get into office without having their extremist views exposed. In Ralph Reed’s words, "I want to be invisible. I paint my face and travel at night. You don't know it's over until you're in a body bag. You don't know until election night."

Achieving gender balance in politics is one way to change our direction and revive a progressive agenda in America on a mass scale.

Women, regardless of party, are a major progressive force in politics. During the last two decades, there was a consistent gender gap on certain issues related to women, families and social well–being. Such issues include: defense of the right to choose safe and legal abortion; environmental protection; support for child-care programs and the achievement of racial equality.

In a study called "How Women Legislate,” by Sue Thomas published by Oxford University Press in 1994, only 26 percent of women legislators agreed that abortion should be prohibited in almost all circumstances compared with 39 percent of male legislators. Seventy nine percent of women state legislators supported the Equal Rights Amendment compared with 61 percent of men.

In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll taken during the 1996 presidential election, 54% of women thought that the main issues facing the nation were social problems such as education and poverty, versus 37% of men.

While all issues are women’s issues, until women are represented in politics in proportion to their percentage in the population, the political system will not adequately address issues of particular concern to women.


Study by the Center for American Women in Politics


The Center for the American Woman in Politics (CAWP) says, "When compared with men, women are: less militaristic...; more likely to favor measures to protect the environment and to check the growth of nuclear power; more often supportive of programs to help the economically disadvantaged [and] more often supportive of efforts to achieve racial equality..."

A more recent study by CAWP of the Democratic-controlled 103rd Congress and the Republican-controlled 104th said that, “Democratic and Republican women legislators of widely differing ideological views and representing markedly different constituents seek to promote legislation that they believe will serve women and are willing to cooperate across party lines to accomplish their legislative objectives for women.”

Across party lines, women share common interests. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) said, “[W]omen from all over the country really do follow what you do and rely on you to speak for them on issues of women’s health care, reproductive choice, condition of families, domestic priorities, equal pay for equal work…”

Deborah Pryce (R-OH) Ohio said, “I think women have to speak up for things that affect women, because men don’t; not out of malice, but because it’s just not of interest to them.”

Congresswoman Nancy Johnson (R-CT) said that regarding legislation she thinks, “How will this effect women who are at home taking care of children and who will need to re-enter the workforce later on? How does this affect women who did not go beyond high school because they thought only boys should go to college and now they’re stuck? I know a lot more about the shape of women’s lives and the patterns of women’s lives, so I need to look and see: How will the public policy affect those patterns?”

The differences women bring often strengthen the institution. Cynthia McKinney (D-GA) said, “They elected me because I am an African American woman who has a certain set of life experiences that differentiate me from the typical male member of Congress… [T]he institution is…enhanced because of the difference I bring.”

The study was very clear and said, “Despite differences in party control, political climate and ideology between the 103rd and 104th congress, the presence of women made a difference in shaping the terms of the debate and in the public policy outcomes in both Congresses.”

Skirting the Issue

I once asked a progressive women’s community leader where she stood on the need for gender balance in politics. She said she was not interested in electing someone just because they “wore a skirt,” implying that flooding the political pipeline with women would result in the election of some right-wing women, a thorny issue.

Granted, in individual cases, we will sometimes find that the man is the better candidate on the issues. But generally, if we want to avoid electing right-wing women, we can work to elect only those who support the right to choose safe and legal abortion. Abortion rights is an issue that effectively separates progressive and moderate women from their right-wing counterparts. If we work to achieve gender balance in politics by electing pro-choice women, we would eliminate most of those women who align politically with the right wing.

Whether or not the abortion issue is used to separate out right-wing women, the CAWP study found that in the 103rd and 104th Congresses, “Most congresswomen, Democratic and Republican, believe they have an obligation to represent women.” There is little doubt that more women in elective office would lead to a national reordering of priorities and would likely thwart religious political extremist’s efforts to define politics of the 21st century in their terms.

It's high time that women took their rightful place as leaders of this country defining and reordering our national priorities. It took suffragists many decades to discover the only successful model for women's participation in the system – women doing it for themselves.


What’s the Problem?


A major obstacle to achieving gender balance in politics is that American women lack a sense of entitlement to political power, a baffling phenomenon. By contrast, I found when I went to Botswana in 1999 to train women to run for public office, that the women of that fledgling democracy were very serious about their claims to political power.

Trainings there contributed to 100% increase in the number of women in Parliament in a single election cycle from 9% in 1994 to 18% in 1999. These African women exceeded proportionately, the representation of women in the U.S. Senate in a much shorter timeframe – because they were determined to do so.

Even today in Iraq, women are demanding a greater role for women in politics. Twenty five percent of the seats in the new national Assembly were reserved for women and women took 31 percent of the seats. That’s about double the percentage of women in the either the U.S. House or Senate and Iraqi women are not satisfied. These kind of numbers would be a major advance for American women in politics when compared with our current role, but Leila Abdul Latif, Minister of Labour and Social Affairs, said "31 percent doesn't satisfy us when you consider than Iraqi women make up more than 50 percent of the population," according to Agence France-Presse.
It’s an attitude, a sense of entitlement to political power that simply does not exist among American women elected officials, women’s organizations, individual women and foundation funders. If American women got serious about achieving political power, they could do so on a dramatically shortened timeline.

Women’s organizations generally do not see it as a priority to support the election of more women to public office. The influence of the few groups like the National Women’s Political Caucus that train women to run for office, is marginal and fading. Instead of encouraging others, they like to stamp out new organizations that try to help. EMILY’s list, with its vast resources, hand selects a few women to promote to higher office instead of flooding the political gates with women at all levels of government.

Existing organizations are not impacting young women in large numbers. While lecturing at American University in Washington, DC in a class called “Women in Modern America,” I was surprised by women, about 20 years old saying that they had no idea that men dominated the decision-making positions in America. These young women said they had never been encouraged to consider a run for public office.

While there were some enlightened members of the class, others shared worn-out stereotypes that should have been long-ago eliminated about the physical weakness and emotional instability of women making them unfit for public office. Of the few young men in the class, their reaction ranged from open hostility to grudging acceptance of the idea of gender balance in politics.

We talked about how to reach young women on the issue. Participants thought that education had to start in elementary and middle school. Few of these young women had heard the stories of the struggles of the Suffragists or any of the early feminists that I highlighted in my lecture. In their experience, the history of women is still missing from the textbooks in early education -- not under represented -- but absent from our history books.


Moving Forward: Run Women Run


Some progress has been made, but advancement is happening at a glacial pace, even when compared to repressive countries like Iraq. I am unwilling to wait 333 years which is the time it has been estimated it will take to achieve gender balance if we continue at the current rate.

I am unwilling to wait that long for legislatures which favor environmental protection, support programs to guarantee quality health care and fulfill the dream of the civil rights movement. Shirley Chisholm, the first African American woman in Congress and to run for U.S. President, envisioned a world led by women and she said, "It is women who can bring empathy, tolerance, insight, patience and persistence to government...The women of a nation mold its morals...and its politics by the lives they live. At present our country needs women's idealism and determination, perhaps more in politics than anywhere else."

That was a long time ago. Women need to make-up some lost ground. There is much work to do toward achieving gender balance in politics and reviving a progressive agenda in America. So, if you've ever looked at a politician and thought, "I could do that and I could do it better", then run for public office. Follow the example of Victoria Woodhull, who ran for president in 1872 and said, "While others argued the equality of men with women, I proved it...I boldly entered the arena."

When women get elected they change the status quo. The San Jose City Council had a majority of women on the council and a woman mayor. They became the first city council in America to negotiate a comparable worth settlement to rectify the historical pattern of lower pay for women.

When you run for public office, you will need a simple, compelling message which is easily communicated. Your message defines your campaign and tells people why they should vote for you. When you feel as though you can never repeat your message again, voters will be hearing it for the first time.

Running an effective campaign involves identifying your voters and communicating your message through grassroots voter contact and the media in order to mobilize people to vote for you. Nothing can replace direct contact with voters at their doors and on the phones. Be prepared to ask everyone you know, and many people you don't know to contribute money to your campaign. Ask people to give as much as they are capable of giving within the limits of the law.

Proving that campaigning is not always serious business, In 1992, a Pennsylvania Democrat flippantly remarked that all U.S. Senate candidate Lynn Yeakel had going for her was that she “had breasts”. This generated a media frenzy. In response, Senate hopeful Claire Sargent of Arizona suggested that “It’s about time we voted for senators with breasts. After all, we’ve been voting for boobs long enough.”



This article is dedicated to my mom. Copyright 2005 Karyn Strickler. Ms. Strickler is a writer, campaign expert and political activist. You can reach her at fiftyplusone@earthlink.net .