Republican women in Iowa, who once enjoyed gender parity in congressional representation, will have no seats when the next Congress is sworn in, losses that reflect a bigger trend on an election night where Democrats across the country flipped enough seats to take control of the House and Senate. Before Election Day, GOP women held a Senate seat and two of Iowa’s four congressional seats. After Tuesday, they will have no representation in either chamber, according to projections from Decision Desk HQ.
Joni Ernst had decided to not seek reelection, and Iowa’s Ashley Hinson lost the race for her seat to Democrat Josh Turek. It wasn’t just in Iowa where Republican women lost: The longest-serving Republican woman senator, Maine’s Susan Collins, fell to Democrat Troy Jackson. More women were on state and federal ballots this cycle, with a record number running for the U.S.
House — but Republican women are increasingly lagging their Democratic counterparts in congressional representation nationwide. House seats, 203 are Democrats, versus 76 Republicans, according to the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP). And those who are in Congress also experience the gender disparity: 42 percent of Democrats in the 119th Congress are women, compared with only 15 percent of Republicans, according to CAWP data.
Experts say that at every stage of the process — from recruitment to fundraising to campaigning to governing — Republican women face unique challenges, roadblocks and obstacles. They are running in a party that says it doesn’t care about gender identity and attempting to attract voters who are less likely to see women as viable leaders. There are far fewer training programs and organizations geared explicitly toward preparing Republican women to run for election.
That means fewer run for state and local office — and hence fewer have the experience, networks and qualifications to run for higher federal office. Still, there were a few bright spots for Republican women on Tuesday. Marsha Blackburn, who made history in 2018 when she became the first woman elected to the Senate from Tennessee, made history again by becoming the state’s first woman governor.
Ashley Moody won reelection, defeating Angie Nixon, a democratic socialist. The losses in Iowa are also a referendum on President Donald Trump, who won the state every time he’s been on the ballot and held a rally in Dubuque over the weekend. They come as Republican presidential hopefuls prepare to swarm the first-in-the-nation caucus state in the lead-up to 2028.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
