Women lead the way in Arizona politics

While gathering signatures, a man once told Sen. Linda Gray, R-10, that women should not be serving in the Arizona Legislature. He refused to sign her petition.

“That was only one person in my five times of gathering signatures, so it is certainly not prevalent,” Gray said.

Gray could not have been more accurate. Arizona voters have long rejected that man’s sexist view and have instead repeatedly elected women to high positions both in the legislative and executive branches of government.

In fact, nearly a decade after it became the first state to elect women to all top five executive posts, Arizona’s female policy-makers have kept their share of power.

Calling the shots at the executive tower is Gov. Janet Napolitano, a badge-wielding former federal prosecutor and one of the “Fab Five,” the all-female team that ran the Capitol after being swept into power in 1998.

A winning proposition
In fact, Arizona’s female policy-makers have proven to be more effective campaigners. From 1980 to 2006, nearly half of women who ran for the Legislature — 47.3 percent to be exact — have won.

Only 43.6 percent of men won during the same period.

Rep. Jackie Thrasher, D-10, summed up the point: “It’s been shown time and again that when women run, they win.”

But while female candidates’ election rates are higher than for men, fewer still venture into politics.
Consider this: In 26 years, 738 women ran for the Legislature, with the highest number recorded at 74 candidates in 2000.

During the same period, however, 2,038 men — nearly three times as many — ran for the state House and Senate.

Lawmakers and experts agree on one factor why fewer women seek public office even when they make up about half of the state population — it’s the challenge of juggling family life and official duties. More specifically, those who have children must find a balance between caring for them and advancing political causes.

“I think it’s difficult for women to balance everything when they are in the Legislature,” said Dana Kennedy, co-chair of Emerge Arizona, a group that trains Democratic women who want to pursue a career in politics. “Women usually have the major responsibility of taking care of the children.”

Proper qualifications
Kennedy also identified another factor — women are reluctant to seek public office because they think they are unqualified.

“When I first approach women to run or go to the program, their first reaction is, ‘I don’t think I’d be right to run for office,’” she said.

Kennedy said when she probes a little more why they think they are unqualified, they cannot give an answer. In fact, when their qualifications are enumerated — good education and leadership positions in the job or in the community, among others — then they start to see themselves as potential candidates.
It is the same reluctance that Paula Wirth, a former development director for the Arizona Wish List, a network that trains and helps Republican women get elected, has also observed.

“Typically women are more hesitant than men,” she said. “They don’t actually realize what wonderful qualifications they have.”

That is why, she said, the first message to a woman thinking of plunging into politics is that she should not be afraid to run.

Feminization of the Legislature
Women first served in the Arizona Legislature during the 1915-1916 session, shortly after Arizona became a state. There was one woman member each in the House and Senate, and together the duo made up 3.7 percent of the 54-member Legislature.

Some 15 years later, nine women made it to the Legislature. Their number took a dip in the 1930s and 1940s.

But in the mid-1950s and early 1960s, the average number of women members was 11, and their number steadily climbed until it reached 27, or 30 percent of the lawmaking body, during the 1989-1990 session.
Today, 30 percent of House and 43.3 percent of Senate members are women. The highest ranking member is Senate Minority Leader Marsha Arzberger. Minority Whip Rebecca Rios is also a woman, and female lawmakers in both chambers hold influential positions as heads of committees.

Sen. Karen Johnson, R-18, said women have held leadership positions as long as she has served. She pointed out that Jane Dee Hull, who later became governor, was House speaker in 1989, and Brenda Burns was Senate president in 1997.

Sen. Linda Gray, R-10, said the “old boys club” notion went away with the imposition of term-limits.
“New leaders, men or women, have to be inclusive in order to get elected,” said the chairwoman of the Senate Public Safety and Human Resources Committee.

State’s ‘Fab Five’ elected
In 1998, the state earned bragging rights by establishing a record. Voters installed Hull as governor, Betsey Bayless as secretary of state, Janet Napolitano as attorney general, Lisa Graham Keegan as superintendent of public instruction, and Carol Springer as state treasurer.

The “Fab Five” was sworn in by Sandra Day O’Connor, an Arizona native who was the first woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Today, Napolitano, a Democrat, serves as governor, and Jan Brewer, a Republican, serves as secretary of state, the second highest executive post.

“I think the Arizona [voters] should be very proud of themselves as far as they do embrace women in leadership roles,” said Emerge Arizona’s Kennedy. “I think the state has a long history. We’re fifth in the county as far as electing women to office, and then we have even a better history of re-electing women to office. So I think the state realizes that when women are elected we do a great job, and we are willing to re-elect them.”

Women policy-makers often push for, and vote for legislation that reflects party views. They just as often cross party lines to lend bipartisan support to legislation. There is hardly a single “women issue,” observers said. Instead, there is an amalgam of issues that both men and women have fought for, defended and advanced.

Universal issues
“What issues are women’s issues? All issues! It’s up to all of us to see that issues that affect our citizens get pushed by all members and get included in the debate regardless of the population group most effected,” Thrasher said.

Johnson, a conservative Republican, is pro-life, wants to keep taxes low so “young mothers can stay home with children,” is pro-Second Amendment and wants to a halt to illegal immigration, among other things.
“The women legislators are as successful with their issues as men are, depending on how much time and effort they put into working their bills and educating their fellow legislators. Support will or will not follow depending on the issue and how they have presented it,” Johnson said.

Wirth, formerly of the Arizona Wish List, identified domestic violence and health care, among others, as issues women are passionate about.

“Childcare issues, and again, education, health care, environment — I do think that women probably emphasize those issues more than men,” Wirth said.

Kennedy said another issue that women from both parties find common ground on is nursing homes.
“I even would argue that health care is not a Democratic or Republican issue. I think where we get into the partisan politics is how you pay for these programs,” she said.

Arizona Legislature beats national average
Starting in the 1990s, with the exception of the 2003-2004 session, women have made up at least 30 percent of the Arizona Legislature.That figure is still well above 23.4 percent, the percentage of women who currently hold legislative seats across the nation. That figure has increased only slightly over the past ten years, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

But the number of women holding leadership posts has increased compared to the year before.
The NCSL said this year, 62 women serve as Senate presidents, House speakers, majority and minority leaders or other top posts in legislatures across the nation. That number is up from the 52 women who held similar posts the year before.

Here’s another fact: A good number of women — 47 this year, and 41 last year — are Democrats, a fact that is also reflected, to a certain degree, in Arizona, where two women Democrats, Arzberger and Rios, hold leadership posts in the Senate.

More recently, Nancy Pelosi’s election as speaker of the U.S. House and Hillary Clinton’s front-runner status among Democrats running for president merely serve to amplify the gains made by women in politics.
“It’s very likely that in the near future a woman will be speaker of the House and or Senate president (in the Arizona Legislature). There’s a lot of talent out there, and the hurdles I think she would face are surviving the campaign and getting elected. After that the job is the same for a man or a woman,” Thrasher said.