Wanted: women in Trenton

[Lenape85]

Wednesday, January 19, 2005

By HERB JACKSON

Quick. What does New Jersey, the prototypical blue state, have in common with red states such as South Carolina, Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Virginia?

The answer: Along with Pennsylvania, we trail the nation in the percentage of women in the legislature.

According to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, New Jersey ranked 43rd in 2004, with just 19 of 120 legislative seats, or 16 percent, held by women.

And that ranking could be generous. When the number of women in state and congressional offices is combined with women's voter registration and turnout to create an overall ranking of political participation, New Jersey ranks dead last - 50th out of the 50 states - according to the Washington-based Institute for Women's Policy Research.

None of the announced candidates for governor is a woman, and if Jon Corzine were to win his bid for governor, none of the candidates being mentioned to fill his U.S. Senate seat is a woman.

Nationwide, nearly 23 percent of legislators are women, a figure that has stayed about the same in the past five years.

Political scientists cite several factors for this. First, there's incumbency: If there's more men in office, and incumbents tend to be reelected, then men will continue to dominate. Also, women traditionally have been underrepresented in occupations, such as lawyer and business owner, which are breeding grounds for politicians.

And in New Jersey, there's the added dimension of strong political parties that choose candidates for the "party line" in primaries before voters even get a say. These choices are usually made by party chairmen - in most cases, they are men - or by small, male-dominated candidate-screening committees.

Women are more likely to get a party's backing when there's more than one seat to fill, such as a two-seat Assembly slate or a multi-candidate freeholder slate, or where there's an incumbent who's overwhelmingly favored and the party needs a sacrificial lamb. Sometimes, these slots pay off, such as when the unknown Christie Whitman nearly unseated U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley in 1990 and was elected governor three years later.

But usually when there's a competitive opening, it's far more likely to go to a man. It's no coincidence that of the six state senators who are women, five were Assembly members who moved up, rather than breaking in from the outside.

The sixth woman senator, freshman Democrat Ellen Karcher of Monmouth County, was the daughter of a former Assembly speaker. Family connections also were a factor with two Assembly members: Mercer County Democrat Bonnie Watson Coleman's father held the same seat a decade earlier, and Sussex County Republican Alison Littell McHose's father is the senator from the same district.

Advocates for more women in office hope that creating a lieutenant governor's post would provide more opportunities because male-female slates are common in other states. But they say party hurdles will remain unless there's an aggressive effort to attract more women candidates.

"You have to really want it, you have to really be ready to go up against all kinds of odds when you know the party leadership is going to be ho-hum about you or even opposed," said state Sen. Barbara Buono, D-Middlesex. "It's a big sacrifice, and it shouldn't be. I do not think you should have to choose between having a family and some balance in your in life, and running for office."

[Kire]

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