NewsWire: 11/13/2020
- At least 15 new Republican women were elected to Congress this year, a new record for the party. With all the Republican female incumbents holding their seats so far, GOP women are set to more than double their ranks in the House. (Christian Science Monitor)
- NH: Democrats dubbed the 2018 midterms “the year of the woman” after a record number of Democratic women were elected to Congress. Now it’s Republicans’ turn. At least 15 freshman Republican women have won their House races, with four more in races yet to be called as of Thursday. Previously, the highest number of freshman Republican women was nine.
- With 11 incumbents returning, this means that at least 26 Republican women will serve in the House next year--more than doubling their current numbers and exceeding their previous record of 25 female members in the 109th Congress. (They will still be outnumbered nearly 4-to-1 in the House by Democratic women.)
- The ascent of Republican women was key to the party’s gains in the House. Of the nine seats that Democrats lost in this election, Republican women flipped seven of them. After the 2018 election, GOP leaders made it a priority to recruit more women to run for office--and their strong showing suggests we’ll see more to come in 2022.
- The incoming class includes Lauren Boebert (born 1986), an outspoken Colorado gun-rights activist; Nancy Mace (born 1977) of South Carolina, who was the first woman to graduate from the Citadel; Maria Alvira Salazar (born 1961), a Telemundo journalist in Florida; Michelle Steel (born 1955) of California, a first-generation Korean American; and Michelle Fischbach (born 1965), a former lieutenant governor in Minnesota.
- There’s no single formula behind a winning candidate. The newly elected range in political experience, level of conservatism, and are all over the age spectrum. But on the campaign trail, most of them declared support for President Trump and his policies. Several ran on fervent anti-socialist or gun-rights platforms--and they didn’t hold back. Boebert’s website promised that she’ll take on “the left-wing lunatics,” while Mary Miller of Illinois (born 1959) proclaimed that she’s a mother of seven who’s ready to “fight against radical, left-wing Democrats who want to destroy America.”
- Perhaps the best-known new face is Marjorie Taylor Greene (born 1974), who ran unopposed in Georgia. Greene has drawn attention for her support of the radical conspiracy theory QAnon (see “Are Americans Losing Their Minds?”). She was one of several Republican congressional candidates who expressed support for QAnon, though the others lost their races.
- Greene’s victory highlights two trends: (1) the continued mainstreaming of conspiracy theories among Republican voters, and (2) the noticeably female tilt of QAnon supporters. Unlike other pro-Trump online groups, the most vocal QAnon supporters are suburban women like Greene.
- Why? One theory is that as QAnon has spread to mainstream social media platforms, it’s taken hold among another majority-female group that already distrusted the establishment: anti-vaxxers. These are the Gen-X “pitbull moms” who have been interrogating doctors, teachers, and Big Pharma for years. And now one of their own has made it to Congress.
