The Pink Revolution and Primary Day

Have you heard about the “pink” revolution?  It seems that on Tuesday there were an unprecedented 100 women running in Congressional primaries across this country.  Apropos to this notable fact, I do not understand why the media feels compelled to color code a wave of women candidates in pastels.  Do they refer to male candidates in terms of the “traditional aqua wave?”  

            If you get past the obvious, though subtle, sexism involved in pinking us up, we seem to be winning.  While women make up 23% of the non-incumbents, they represent almost half of the candidates who won outright or advanced to a runoff.  That doubles the number of men who have been able to do the same.  Women appear to be finding their political feet.

            There are five issues that dominate the campaign talk in Congressional races.  Four of the five are shared by both male and female candidates.  Healthcare leads both lists.  It is joined by gun rights, immigration, and abortion.  The demonstrable difference is that men place taxes at second place on their list, while women replace that topic with education. 

            Clocking the amount of time both sexes spend on the top 10 issues shows women focus on education, climate change, campaign reform, minimum wage and criminal justice reform.  Men prefer to talk about tax policy, business regulations, national debt, defense and terrorism.  All these issues are important.  All are understood by both sexes.  It is not that women see the big picture less.  We see it quite well, and it worries us.  We also know that just as light is made up of individual quanta of energy, so the big picture is made of quanta of small course corrections.  Maybe patience is a feminine virtue.  If so, it is not the only one we possess.

Every representative who goes to Congress faces the duality of having to first represent their district and then fold that representation into what is best for the country. Those two constituencies do not always have immediately and apparently compatible needs.  Sometimes a Congressional district’s needs must give way to the greater good of the nation.  Other times the district’s needs are correctly championed over the needs of the nation.  It is a balancing act—sort of like when a woman must be a wife, a mother and an employee when each job pulls her in a different direction. 

Women have been doing this for decades.  We are experts at it.  Slowly the nation is now seeing that what we have done in the home we can now do in Congress.  It is time. 

This leads me to one glaring problem here in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.  We have a great many good and qualified political leaders.  Not enough of them are women.  Are women unavailable? Unqualified? Lost---stolen...strayed?  Or are they simply lacking a good mentor from the political establishment to help them along the way? 

I ran for the state legislature once when I lived in Missouri.  I was running as a Republican against a Democratic incumbent and the same party that had encouraged me to run was hesitant to give me any money.  That changed when the wife of our incumbent Senator heard me give a speech.  She talked to me after the event and I received a very nice check from the party in less than a week.   That was woman power at work.  [FYI.  Ultimately, despite being endorsed by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch—the largest newspaper in Missouri—I lost that election.]

But, win, lose or draw, the increase of women in politics is not a pink revolution.  It is totally, red, white and blue.  Keep the faith, ladies.