"Winning Women?"

Darcy in the NY Times today (hat tip to the Gen. JC Christian, patriot):

Darcy Burner has never held public office — the former Microsoft project manager is just 35 — but nonetheless she appears to have a good shot at becoming the first Democratic representative from Washington’s Eighth District. The timing of her bid is propitious: in this scandal-saturated election year, her lack of political experience may be a boon. And the fact that Burner is an adept fund-raiser has fueled her quick rise. There’s another, slightly more intangible factor at play, too: Evergreen-state residents are accustomed to female leadership. “You don’t have the hurdle of convincing voters that women can do the job when the models include people without a Y chromosome,” Burner told me recently. And in fact, Washington is the only state in the nation where both senators and the governor are women.

The West has always been known for “breaking the bonds of custom,” as the historian Fredrick Jackson Turner put it. That has provided opportunities to enterprising men, but women have left their mark as well. In politics, they’ve become a fixture to an extent not seen even in liberal bastions like Massachusetts. Women have resided in Arizona’s gubernatorial mansion for nearly a decade. Neighboring California’s two senators are female, as is nearly a third of that state’s House delegation. And the November elections could sweep more Western women into office. State Senator Dina Titus, Democrat of Nevada, is waging a campaign for governor, headlining an almost all-female ticket. Gabrielle Giffords is favored to win Arizona’s Eighth District for the Democrats. And one of the most tightly fought races in the country — a showdown between a four-term representative, Heather Wilson (Republican of New Mexico), and Attorney General Patricia Madrid — will send a woman to Congress no matter which party prevails.

While plenty of Republican female stars — like former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor — got their starts out West, most of the region’s female candidates for high office this year are Democrats. Representative Rahm Emanuel of Chicago, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, says that regional and national trends make Democratic female candidates ideal standard-bearers. “Education, the environment and livability issues are coming to the forefront in that part of the country, and these women speak to the changing nature of the region,” he says.

To be sure, these candidates will not win or lose their races on the basis of their sex alone. Talent on the stump, credentials and fund-raising will be decisive. The fact that they have the opportunity to make their case, however, speaks to Western states’ receptivity to women in public life. That legacy dates back to the pioneer era and was partly born of necessity. The agricultural model of the ranch — unlike, say, the Southern plantation — often demanded that the sexes work side by side. Western states were the first to grant female suffrage, and allowing women access to the ballot was followed by electing them to high office: the first U.S. congresswoman hailed from Montana, the first female state senator from Utah.

To this day, political parties in Western states tend to be more open to women than the networks that reign in parts of the East Coast. “The process for getting on the ballot isn’t as transparent in states with entrenched machines,” says Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. She points to her home state, New Jersey, where county chairmen — and they are almost always men — often determine who will run. “In part because those decisions are generally made behind closed doors, it makes it harder for women to get involved,” Walsh says. Indeed, the Garden State and Massachusetts — two states with strong machines — have all-male Congressional delegations, despite their progressive political leanings.

Of course, even this year, some of the Western women challengers will fall short. Incumbents aren’t shoo-ins, either. Senator Maria Cantwell, a Washington State Democrat, is facing a tough re-election challenge. Nevertheless, given the region’s more transparent political parties and history, it is well poised to retain its status as an incubator of female leadership. That may bode well for Senator Hillary Clinton if she decides to make a bid for the presidency. She would have trouble carrying states in the South, but if Western voters extend their embrace of female leadership to the highest levels of government, a promotion from the Senate to the White House could be within her reach.