September 10, 1998
Year of the Woman Returns
The publicity attending Anita Hill and Hillary Clinton made
1992 "The Year of the Woman" and helped elect six women to the U.S.
Senate. Geraldine Ferraro failed to join the parade when she narrowly lost a
chance to be the Democratic nominee against Al D'Amato. Now the former
Vice Presidential candidate is running again, and making an overt pitch for
female votes. So far, it isn't working. Polls show Ms. Ferraro trailing among
likely Sept. 15 primary voters. The blas‚ reaction to the Ferraro candidacy
tells us that women in politics may have progressed to the point where
voters now judge them mainly on their merits.
The presence of women in politics has grown steadily. The 1992 victors
were followed by the elections of New Jersey Governor Christine Todd
Whitman and GOP Senators Kay Bailey Hutchison, Olympia Snowe and
Susan Collins. Elizabeth Dole is a contender for the GOP Presidential
nomination. But there's been a change from the hype of 1992. Women
candidates today are more likely to be treated like earthbound politicians
than holy figures deserving special status and deference.
Ms. Ferraro has tried to avoid controversy and play
off her celebrity status. The former co-host of
"Crossfire," CNN's debating cauldron, has avoided
any televised debates to date. When CBS reporter
Marcia Kramer challenged her aversion to debates,
Ms. Ferraro snapped back, "Whose campaign are
you working for?" She's still averse to answering
questions.
Ms. Ferraro has also avoided questions about her
family's complex financial affairs. After the 1984
Presidential election, the House Ethics Committee
found clear violations in the disclosure forms she'd
filed as a Congresswoman, but it softened the draft report's suggestion of a
reprimand because she was leaving Congress. This year Ms. Ferraro
grudgingly released her tax returns under restrictions: Reporters could
examine them for a three-hour period in the offices of her accountant but
couldn't copy them.
Incumbent Illinois Senator Carol Moseley-Braun is also struggling and most
recently fell to fighting, not with her opponent, but with George Will. A
recent Will column questioned why the Justice Department had twice
refused IRS requests to impanel grand juries to hear evidence about her
possible tax violations. "I think because he could not say 'nigger,' he said the
word 'corrupt,' " Senator Moseley-Braun raged at reporters last Sunday.
"George Will can just take his hood and go back to wherever he came
from." Ms. Moseley-Braun later apologized and her office had to
acknowledge Mr. Will hadn't used the word "corrupt." Polls had her GOP
opponent ahead by 11 points before the Will incident.
California's Senator Barbara Boxer, another "Year of the Woman" winner,
is also in trouble. Recall that Senator Boxer was thunderously critical of
former Senator Bob Packwood's smooching transgressions. She waited,
however, until this Tuesday to announce on the Senate floor that President
Clinton's behavior was "immoral." Senator Boxer's unquestioned liberalism
may not be enough to carry her to a second term against GOP nominee
Matt Fong; polls show the race tied.
The electoral difficulties of these individual candidates are hardly going to
stall the recent advance of women in politics. They do suggest, however,
that the media-driven assumption that women in office succeed only if they
are Stepford Liberals is simplistic. Elinor Burkett, a feminist writer who has
written a respectful book on conservative women, says their new-found
prominence since 1992 isn't a feminist nightmare but a feminist victory:
"Women finally have enough power and forbearance to splinter in a
thousand directions, and still succeed . . . we need not speak in one voice to
be heard." What the 1998 campaign has revealed is that some of the voices
of 1992 are no longer speaking to the real concerns of contemporary
voters.
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