Spurred by Rush Limbaugh’s verbal assault of a female Georgetown University student’s testimony on birth control and a dramatic drop in the women vote in 2010, the Democratic Party is mounting an aggressive bid to give the fall vote a pink sparkle.
Led by their populist leader, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., the Democratic National Committee this month opened a new Women’s Initiative to support female candidates and women surrogate speakers for all Democrat office-seekers who rely on women voters to win. “Women’s voices are crucial for our democracy,” says Wasserman Schultz.
She has been working overtime to get women back to the voting booths and their numbers expanded in Congress. In speeches, like one before the National Democratic Institute last week, she uses scary numbers to shock women to join her cause. For example, she notes that since Congress was created in the 1700s, just 277 women have served compared to 12,000 men. “At this rate we will not reach parity in Congress for 500 years,” she says.
As chair of the DNC, she is especially worried about the dramatic drop-off in the female vote from 2008, when 60 percent of eligible women voted, to 2010, when just 46 percent did.
“There is just too much at stake for women to sit this one out,” she says, especially in light of the recent Limbaugh controversy which Democrats have seized on to woo women. “The way women are talked about in this country must change,” she says.
Wasserman Schultz likes to lead by example, even in her DNC office. “My office is pale pink, bright pink,” she says. “I wanted to make sure when I got to the DNC and saw these really big masculine brown couches that a strong signal was sent to anyone who crossed the threshold of my office that a woman works here now.”
