Women in Congress Near Breakthrough Moment in Midterm Elections

Women are poised to reach a new milestone in Congress next year, as a surge of female candidates could expand their numbers to nearly a quarter of the House and Senate for the first time in history.

The House likely will set records on the total number of women newly elected at once—more than three dozen if the closest races break their way—and on the total number of women serving simultaneously, which may exceed 100 for the first time.

The gains by women are expected to favor Democrats—they outnumber female Republican nominees by better than 3-to-1—and represent a significant component of the Democratic effort to retake control of the House.

Pushing female representation in the House close to 25 percent “would be a significant jump," said Kelly Dittmar, a scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “Congress is an institution built for and by men and it takes a long time to better accommodate and include people who weren’t there to begin with.”

The record of at least 255 women on the ballot as major party congressional candidates in the November general election—one race is in a recount—represents a little less than half of those who ran in the primaries, a sign of how tough it is to get to Washington. The bulk of those on the ballot are incumbents or making long-shot bids for office.

In the most favorable scenario for women candidates—which would have them winning all toss-up races as well as those where their party is even slightly favored—there could be as many as 40 new female representatives in the House. Accounting for women who are leaving the 435-member House, that could result in 100 to 110 women seated as representatives when the next Congress convenes in January, up from 84, or 19 percent, now. Races can shift in the seven weeks until the election.

In the Senate, where there currently are 23 women among 100 members, potential gains are likely to be more modest.

Related story: Record Numbers of Women Running for Office May Not Mean Big Gains in Congress ⭢

The newcomers generally are younger than the average member of the current Congress—the oldest in recent history—and propelled by female-driven grassroots organizing that grew with the #MeToo movement and President Donald Trump’s election. They are ideologically diverse, from progressive Democrats to conservative Republicans.

In multiple races, women are vying to fill seats vacated by female lawmakers. Republican Maria Elvira Salazar, 56, a journalist and TV host, is running to replace retiring Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, a frequent critic of Trump.

Salazar said that while she doesn’t always approve of the way Trump deals with issues like immigration or with the press, she views the Republican Party through the legacy of Ronald Reagan and Abraham Lincoln.

“That’s why as a Hispanic woman I have decided to stay within the family and have a seat at the table,” she said.

Several of the Democrats who won primaries were in the vanguard of the party’s progressive wing and became instant political stars in the process.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a 28-year-old Hispanic activist, and Ayanna Pressley, a 44-year-old member of the Boston City Council, both scored upsets in Democratic primaries over older, white incumbents in highly diverse districts that they’d represented for two decades.

Running in solidly Democratic areas, they’re both set to achieve firsts: New York’s Ocasio-Cortez would be the youngest woman elected to the House and Pressley would be the first black woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts.

Others breaking ground include Jahana Hayes, the 2016 National Teacher of the Year, who is poised to become the first black woman elected to Congress from Connecticut. The House also is set to have its first two female Muslim members: Rashida Tlaib, a former state legislator running in Detroit, and Ilhan Omar, a state legislator running in Minneapolis. Omar, who came to the U.S. as a refugee, would be the first Somali-American in Congress.

Abigail Spanberger, 38, is emblematic of the 2018 class of female candidates running in competitive races. She’s challenging GOP Representative Dave Brat in a once solidly Republican Virginia congressional district that has grown more suburban—and Democratic—in recent years.

On a stormy Friday night in early September, the former CIA agent was working through the crowded first floor of a home in a Richmond suburb, shaking hands, taking selfies and answering questions. Some of the more than 100 people at the event, most of them women, were led to Spanberger’s campaign through a local group that organizes liberal women.

Spanberger said that while some of her supporters were inspired by the idea of electing a woman to Congress, she attributes her draw to connections she made while working on Virginia’s state legislative races in 2017. She has focused on two issues—health care and education—that polls show resonate with female voters.

“Many of those volunteers were women and many of the women volunteers were super excited at the notion of supporting a woman candidate,” she said. “But I think that that alone certainly wasn’t the full piece of it.”

Her race against Brat is rated as a tossup by the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, as are the contests facing 20 other women running for the House or Senate.

Democrat Katie Hill also is in a close contest, facing Republican Representative Steve Knight in a district north of Los Angeles. A nurse and non-profit executive, Hill embraces the idea of running as a woman, and not “as a woman trying to be a man.”

At 31 years old, Hill would be one of the youngest new members of Congress. But running as a young woman comes with a unique set of challenges, from advice about makeup or clothing to inappropriate touches and threats, hazards mentioned by other female candidates.

“I really don’t don’t want to scare women away from running because I think it’s so, so important,” she said. “But I guess the message from me is that, yeah, you’re going to have to put up with a lot of crap.”

Women now account for 31 percent of House Democrats, while they’re less than 10 percent of House Republicans. With more than three-quarters of the women on November ballots running as Democrats, the gender imbalance between the two parties in the House is likely to grow.

Related story: Here’s How Women Did in Congressional Primaries ⭢

Democratic activists say this year’s surge in female candidates is just the start of a trend triggered, in part, by anger among woman at Trump’s policies and statements.

"I suspect this is not a fluke and will continue to increase for 2020, 2022 and 2024," said Katie Hogan, the executive director of Organizing for Action, a Chicago-based advocacy and grassroots organizing group. “We had a whole new group of people who wanted to be trained who weren’t politically involved, except for maybe voting.”

GOP officials say they have been playing the long game on recruiting women to run. During the 2014 midterm elections, they began Project Grow and during this election, the head of the recruitment effort, Representative Elise Stefanik, brought on 120 women to run for House seats, said Matt Gorman, the communications director for the National Republican Congressional Committee.

They also are working to keep female GOP incumbents in office. The NRCC has reserved $4.8 million in TV ad buys to defend their most vulnerable incumbent, Representative Barbara Comstock of Virginia.

"She’s going to win that race, period," Gorman said. "Many, many people have counted out Barbara Comstock in past elections."

Comstock’s Democratic challenger is former prosecutor and state senator Jennifer Wexton. The race, in the Washington suburbs, is one of 27 general election House contests in which two women are competing against each other.

Three new women potentially could join the Senate if races break their way. But prospects for female gains beyond the 17 Democrats and six Republicans now serving in the chamber are harder to forecast.

Among incumbent female senators on the November ballot, Democrats Claire McCaskill in Missouri and Heidi Heitkamp in North Dakota are running against male candidates and are considered vulnerable. Female candidates are competing against men in toss-up Senate races in Nevada and Tennessee. Arizona, though, is set to elect a woman to the Senate for the first time. In Mississippi, Republican Cindy Hyde-Smith, who was appointed in April to fill an open seat, is favored to win a Nov. 6 special election.

Where Women Will Appear on November Ballots

• At least one woman won a primary
• No women won
• Results pending
No women ran

Senate races

15 states

No

election

Senate races

15 states

No election

Senate races

15 states

No election

House races

200 districts

House races

200 districts

House races

200 districts

Gubernatorial races

16 states

Gubernatorial races

16 states

Gubernatorial races

16 states

Women are also poised to record gains in statehouses. There will be 12 Democrats and four Republicans on the ballot for governor in the 36 states holding races, according to the center at Rutgers University.

With only six female governors now in office, the number is almost certain to grow after November’s elections. The record for the most at one time is nine, recorded in 2004 and 2007, the center’s data shows.

Three of the four incumbent female governors up for re-election this year—in Alabama, Oregon and Rhode Island—are favored to win. The fourth, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, is in a race against Democratic businessman Fred Hubbell that’s rated as a tossup.