Tag: Kelly Dittmar

But while it’s her job to recruit, train and fundraise for female Republican candidates she finds herself telling many women to not run — at least not this year. “A lot of good moderate Republican women who want to run for office, our advice is ‘You’re a good candidate, you would probably win in any other year, let’s wait’”. Female Republican candidates are having a harder time than usual in 2018. “It’s always been hard, but this year all the reasons it’s been tough make it even tougher.” According to the Center for American Women in Politics, the number of Democratic women running for House seats this year increased 146 percent over 2016 (to 351), while the number of Republican women running for the House increased just 35 percent (to 99); on the other side of the Capitol there are only 14 Republican women running for Senate compared to 27 Democratic women. In part this is because there have always been fewer Republican women in high office than Democratic women. And the reason for that, candidates and strategists say, is the reason for so many other phenomena in politics at the moment – Donald Trump. Women are expected to have a stand on Trump, on #MeToo, and men aren’t even asked the question. Texas has not sent a freshman woman to Congress in 22 years, “meaning an entire generation of young Texans has never seen a woman elected” to that job, so while her gender got her a bit of attention, not all of it was good. Blackburn, who proudly aligns herself with the president, is considered the front-runner for the GOP nomination in that race, and she sent her staff to call Corker out. Republican women though have slowed down” their expected timeline, waiting to see if the landscape shifts.