Just days after the most female freshman class in American history was sworn into the 116th Congress in January, the next wave of aspiring women candidates gathered in the basement of a university building in downtown Richmond, Virginia.
Together over the next six months, these women will learn the fundamentals of running for office – how to build a campaign team, deliver a stump speech and raise money.
The prospective candidates mostly lack political experience, but they have ambition – a trait that is celebrated at Emerge Virginia, part of the Emerge America national training program for Democratic women started in California in 2002. The non-profit aims to help women overcome the obstacles that have long kept the corridors of power overwhelmingly male.
One of the new trainees in the Virginia program is Ivory Dean, a science policy fellow in Washington DC, who plans to start her career in local politics. But, with Washington in turmoil and a nation divided, she fully intends to one day run for president of the United States.
“We need leaders now more than ever,” Dean said. “So I asked myself, why am I waiting for someone else to come along and be that leader?”
The 2018 midterm elections saw the biggest jump in women elected to the House since the original “Year of the Woman” in 1992. The new Congressional class was the youngest and most diverse in history, ushering in a wave of political firsts that include the first two Native American women and the first two Muslim women elected.
“In politics there are these jolts to the system and something fundamental happens,” said Jennifer Lawless, a professor at the University of Virginia, who writes extensively about women in politics. “It’s likely that 2018 was that year.”
But the 116th Congress is still only 23.7% female.
Now the task for groups like Emerge, Emily’s List, She Should Run and VoteRunLead, which have seen record recruitment since Donald Trump’s election, is to make sure 2018 wasn’t just a “a fad, fancy, or a year”, in the words of the trailblazing senator Barbara Mikulski– and that progress towards equal political representation for women not only continues but accelerates.
There’s optimism that the gains made in 2018 are a sign of lasting change.
“The trail is being blazed on a daily basis by other women candidates,” said Julie Copeland, the executive director of Emerge Virginia. “I just don’t see any signs of that changing.”
Sitting around the horseshoe table near Dean was Jenny High, a business consultant from Glen Allen, north-west of Richmond.She is eyeing an opening on the local school board. Laura Sellers, a counterintelligence analyst from Stafford and the only woman in the Emerge Virginia 2019 cohort to hold elected office – had just committed to challenging the Republican incumbent in Virginia’s senate district 28.
Over the next several months of training, Copeland will help connect the trainees with party leaders, elected officials and the sprawling network of Emerge alumnae – many of whom are now positioned to help other women climb the ladder.
