Gentlewoman-To-Be Of The House

Kathy Dahlkemper (D) will be the new Congresswoman from Pennsylvania's 3rd District, having beat out incumbent Congressman Phil English for the honor of representing the district. A long-time resident of Erie but a first-time campaigner, she and her husband, Dan have 5 kids.

Marcia Fudge (D) will be coming to Washington as the new Congresswoman for Ohio's 11th District, filling the seat but not (yet) the shoes of deceased Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones. She was Jones' chief of staff and has also served as the mayor of Warrensville. She'll also be up for a special election to fill the remainder of Jones' term on November 18th.

Debbie Halvorson (D) will be representing Illinois' 11th district, having beaten Marty Ozinga in the race to replace retiring Republican Jerry Weller. She's served in the Illinois state Senate since 1996, and we all know what can happen to good Illinois state Senators after yesterday!

Lynn Jenkins (R) beat out incumbent Nancy Boyda (D, sniff) for the right to represent Kansas' 2nd district. He first term in the state House left her hungry for more, so she ran for state Senate two years later. She never completed her Senate term, running (and winning) the State Treasurer's seat in 2002. She won re-election in 2006 and then beat Jim Ryun, the incumbent that Boyda toppled in 2006, in this year's primary.

Ann Kirkpatrick (D) beat out Sydney Hay for the right to show the citizens of Arizona's first Congressional district that not every elected representative needed to be as corrupt as their retiring Congressman, Republican Rick Renzi. Born on the White Mountain Apache reservation, she spent much of her career as a prosecutor and won a set in Arizona's House in 2004 and 2006 — a seat she resigned to pursue her interest in higher office.

Suzanne Kosmas (D) beat out the 24th district of Florida's Republican Congressman Tom Feeney. Feeney oversaw the post-Census redistricting as the former State House Speaker and used his role to draw himself a nice, safe little Congressional district. Whoops. Kosmas, who served with Feeney for two of her eight years in the state House and, despite her challenger status, nearly matched him in fundraising (which is quite an accomplishment in and of itself).

Cynthia Lummis (R) beat out Democrat Gary Trauner in the race to replace Barbara Cubin in Wyoming's sole Congressional district. Lummis is a statehouse veteran, having been (in 1979) the youngest woman to ever serve in Wyoming's legislature. She served 14 years as both a House and Senate member, and then served 2 terms as State Treasurer (from 1999-2007).




Betsy Markey (D) beat out anti-gay advocate and incumbent Congresswoman Marilyn Musgrave to represent Colorado's 4th Congressional district. Musgrave is perhaps best known for her persistent and unwavering support for and sponsorship of legislation to create a Constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage forever and ever. Markey and her husband moved to Colorado from Washington D.C. in 1995, but this is her first race for federal office.

Chellie Pingree (D) beat Charlie Summers for the right to Democrat Tom Allen's seat in Maine's first Congressional district. Allen waged an ultimately unsuccessful campaign this year to unseat incumbent Republican Senator Susan Collins. Pingree herself challenged Collins in 2002, after having served the maximum 4 terms (8 years) in the state Senate (1993-2001). After that, she was the national president and CEO of Common Cause from 2003-2007, a position she left to run for Congress.

(Alice) Dina Titus (D) will represent Nevada's 3rd district next year, having beaten incumbent Congressman Jon Porter yesterday. She's a PoliSci professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, and has served at the state Senate minority leader since 1993 (she's been in the Senate since being elected in 1988). She challenged corrupt, waitress-groping Republican Jim Gibbons in the 2006 gubernatorial race but lost because apparently Nevadans sometimes like that sort of thing.

The Gentlewomen-To-Be Of The Senate

New Jezebel favorite Kay Hagan (D) whomped incumbent Senator Elizabeth Dole last night despite Dole's efforts to paint her as a godless heathen who couldn't be trusted. Hagan has been a state Senator since 1998, and this is her first run for federal office.

Former Governor Jean Shaheen (D) won her re-match against nepotism-beneficiary and incumbent Senator John Sununu last night. She previously served in the State Senate (1990-1996) and 3 terms as governor (1996-2002) before losing that year's Senate race to Sununu. Before challenging him to a rematch, she was the director of the Institute of Politics at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Madame Governor

Beverly Perdue (D) woke up this morning as the Governor-elect of the State of North Carolina. She will be the first female governor of the state — a feeling she might already be used to, having been its first female lieutenant governor for the past 8 years. She started her political career in the state House in 1986, moving to the Senate in 1990 and taking the gavel of the Appropriations Committee in 1995. She'll be one of 8 women governors this year, though the rest are incumbents.

Maybe Ladies?

There are actually two House races that remain undecided!

Darcy Burner (D) is, at this hour, down by about 1,500 votes in her bid to unseat Congressman Dave Reichert. This is only her second campaign — she left Microsoft in 2004 and ran against Reichert in 2006, losting by less than 3% of the vote.






Mary Kilroy (D) is, at this hour, down by about 12,500 votes (4.5%) in her race against Steve Stivers to replace retiring Republican Congresswoman Deborah Pryce. She's been active in local politics for more than 15 years, but her first bid for federal office was in 2006, when she failed to unseat Pryce by barely 1,000 votes.

Some Minor Gains For Women in Politics [Feministing]
Candidate date from CNN's Election Center

MEGAN: What got you interested in politics as a young woman?

GOVERNOR GRANHOLM: Actually my folks — who were immigrants, and I'm an immigrant to this country, too, having been born in Canada, though we moved here when I was 3 years old — they were always very focused on service. And they taught me that we were put on this planet to do something more than serve ourselves and that we have an obligation to make it better, in whatever way people can do that. My parents are avid Republicans so, in high school, I worked for Gerald Ford, going door-to-door when he was seeking to be re-elected, or, elected for the first time since he ascended after Nixon.

But, when I got to college, post-high school, I moved further to the center and then further to the left. I ended up working for John B. Anderson, who was an independent Presidential candidate. Then I continued to move further left on the spectrum and became an avid Democrat, largely because I come from such middle class roots and knowing that, in my experience, the Democratic party has been the party that speaks to pocketbook issues for real people and speaks to equality and tries to make the playing field level for all citizens. So that's how I got interested in politics.

MEGAN: And what made you decide are all the kinds of service, of all the ways you could have served your community, to go into politics?

GOVERNOR GRANHOLM: I went to law school — I was the first person in my family to go to college at all and ended up going to Harvard Law School, which was a really big deal for my family — and at law school I wanted to be a civil rights lawyer. There just some truly great professors, especially women professors, who really motivated me to make sure that the law was used as both a sword and a shield for making sure that people had equal access to jobs or to whatever democracy has to offer. So when I got out, I thought I was going to be a public sector lawyer — I was going to be a civil rights lawyer, I ended up a prosecutor. I had a very good track record as a federal prosecutor. So, in fact, I wasn't thinking about political office for myself. I worked for campaigns and I supported political candidates, but I never thought of myself as someone who would run.

But when the attorney general of the state of Michigan retired, a number of people came to me and said, "You know, you should run for attorney general." And I thought, "Get out of here! Why would I do that?" My mother always told me three things you should do or not do:

1. Don't ask strangers for money.
2. Don't talk about yourself because no one wants to hear it, and
3. Don't wear your good clothes every day.

But when I started running, which was a really big deal because a lot of times women, I think, are used to being in the background and helping others, so it's difficult sometimes for women to say, "It's me." I'm a pre-title IX woman, so for our generation a lot of times the kind of competition and competitiveness and the sense of besting your opponent was not something we had a whole lot of access to in school. So it was a very bid decision for me to decide to run for statewide office when I'd never been elected to anything. But that's how I jumped in.

MEGAN: I've heard this from other women candidates, and you alluded to it earlier, this reluctance among particularly women candidates to ask people for money. On the other hand, women candidates — and you can see that from the women Senators, Governors and Congresspeople here —can be really great fundraisers. What has your experience been like raising money to continue to run for office.

GOVERNOR GRANHOLM: Well, I've raised record amount of money for a Democratic candidate in our state. But the reason why it becomes easier is that you realize that you're not asking for money for people about you. It's not about you. It's about what change you want to bring about. So if I'm going to advocate for and bring alternative and renewable energy jobs to Michigan, that's what you're investing in, that policy. If I'm advocating for early childhood education, that's what you're investing in. And it's a much easier thing when people realize this. Hillary Clinton the other night said, "Did you get involved in this campaign for me? Or did you do it for the woman with leukemia?" You did it for that. That's what it's all about.

So getting women to step out of themselves and to realize that this is about something much more important than just one person or one's self. It's not about ego. It is about getting things done. And that's the great thing about women candidates — it's that they get things done. They're used to being the ones who get things done and not necessarily having to be the one to take the credit. And that's why they're so effective as leaders and as candidates — because they're generous and gracious candidates, and they're generous and gracious leaders.

MEGAN: If you had one piece of advice that you could give to the women reading this site that might be interested in getting involved in politics, where would you advise them to start, or what would you advise them to do?

GOVERNOR GRANHOLM: There's a couple of places that have great resources. The Barbara Lee Family Foundation — now, I speak as a governor — in Massachusetts is focused on getting women to run for executive office. And they have a book called "The Keys to the Governor's Office" — but you could say the keys to any executive office that women might want to run for. It has specific steps that women should take if they are interested in running.

But I think the most important step that a woman needs to take is to be bold. To realize that change is not going to happen unless they jump in, and not to cede it to other people, not to assume that others are going to do it for them. If they are dissatisfied about something then they have the responsibility as a citizen on the planet to make that change themselves. So they need to get the backbone steel to jump in. And there's lots of tools out there for women once they've made that decision. But it's the threshold decision that is theirs. And I think they need to ask themselves why they were put on this planet.