Like the sinister Voldemort character in the series of Harry Potter fantasy novels, President Trump is “he who must not be named” as Republicans in Congress struggle to fix their problem with women.
It’s Trump’s polarizing leadership that pushed female voters into the Democratic camp in droves in the midterm elections and fueled a 40-seat blowout that sunk the GOP House majority. Yet, the president garnered nary a mention this week as top Republicans gathered to discuss solutions to the party’s women conundrum during a conference in Washington organized by Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y.
Instead, Republicans offered other reasons for their challenges with female voters, including media bias and their own party’s failure to adequately recruit, finance, and elevate female candidates.
Rep. Jaime Herrera Beutler, R-Wash., a featured panelist, blamed the GOP’s challenges with women on biased media coverage — a “glass ceiling” that she claims unfairly hinders Republican women in politics, whether on the stump or in elective office. Up-and-coming female Democrats get profiled in positive, puffy magazine features, she complained, while rising Republican women are, at best, ignored.
“I think we have a strong story to tell, again, if we can get the message out,” Herrera Beutler told reporters on Thursday after participating an the half-day conference to launch E-PAC, the new political action committee that Stefanik formed for the sole purpose of electing Republican women by providing crucial financial and logistical support in competitive Republican primaries.
Another panelist, Rep. Tom Emmer, R-Minn., declined to directly address reporters’ questions about Trump’s responsibility for the party’s sharp decline with female voters. The newly minted chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee downplayed the 2018 results, which saw the Democrats win their biggest House victory since Watergate by flipping dozens of suburban seats the GOP had held for several years.
“We’re here talking about the women’s PAC and how we can attract more women,” Emmer said. “People want to make is sound like it was this, almost, wave election. Historically, in the first midterm, the party in power loses about 32 seats. Alright, we’ve lost 40.”
After the GOP’s 2018 losses, there are only 13 Republican women serving in the House. Among them, there is just one Republican woman serving as the ranking member of a major policy committee and just one, Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, serving in leadership. Cheney is the conference chairwoman, third in the pecking order.
In contrast to some of her colleagues, Stefanik, 34, is candid about the political ramifications of the paucity of GOP women in top posts.
“It’s a problem,” she told reporters, when asked whether it matters that the vast majority of House Republicans are white and male. “This is why electing more Republican women is more important. When they announced the incoming freshman class in the Republican conference, they announce each individual and they line up. It was such a stark, out-of-touch-with-reality picture where [Rep. Carol Miller, R-W.Va.] was the only female in that line up.”
Stefanik, in her third term and considered a rising star in the party, aims to fill the void.
Her new group, E-PAC, plans to identify and support women running in GOP primaries, especially in gerrymandered seats designed to elect Republicans, in a bid to increase the number of conservative women in Congress — and to up the number of Republican women in leadership positions on Capitol Hill.
The group is positioning itself as a sort-of Republican EMILY’s List, the liberal group that raises tens of millions of dollars every election cycle to elect pro-choice, female Democrats. That means Stefanik intends to intervene in primaries to defeat male candidates, as long as there is a woman running who earns her group’s support by meeting an as-yet-undisclosed set of metrics. Stefanik said the group had raised about $250,000 in just a couple of weeks.
Lurking in the background of every discussion about Republicans and female voters is Trump. But picking a fight with him in public could turn off donors and grassroots activists, sowing divisions that could damage Republicans running down-ticket in 2020.
Besides, argue GOP insiders, everyone in the party understands that Trump is a major sticking point with female voters and hamstringing the party’s ability to lure their support. Browbeating the president would only make the situation worse.
“Nobody needs to say it,” a Republican strategist said. “All the stuff with Trump is baked in.”
