More power to women
seeking office in N.J.
EDITORIAL, Home News
Tribune Online (thnt.com) March 30, 2007
The impending retirement of 12 state
senators — all but one of them male — presents a long-overdue opportunity for
New Jersey's political establishment and the voters to put more women in the
Statehouse come this fall. May the parties and the electorate answer that
call.
New Jersey's rough treatment of female political candidates in recent decades
has become something of a national embarrassment, especially when compared to
what has happened in other corners of the country, where most states have sped
up their election of women to state and national office. It's time for a
similar movement here.
There was a day when New Jersey was a trendsetter in promoting women to high
elective office. Sadly, that's no longer the case. Consider that in
1927, 15 percent of the state's legislators were women, making New Jersey
something of a leader for women in politics at the time. Today, that ratio
has barely budged, with women occupying a scant 19 out of 120 seats in the state
Legislature, or 16 percent of the total. As a result, New Jersey now ranks
in the bottom 10 states for its number of elected state officeholders who are
women.
New Jersey's record of electing women to Congress is even worse. Not a
single representative or U.S. senator from New Jersey is a woman. The
dearth of women in elected office has not gone unnoticed.
"In New Jersey, we are woefully behind other states where women are more a part
of the process," state Sen. Ellen Karcher, D-Monmouth, said last week.
"It's really disconcerting, and I don't know what accounts for that, except for
women in particular feeling disenfranchised and feeling their votes don't count.
It seems an anomaly that the participation by women in politics is low here,
because the state is otherwise progressive and people are well educated."
Still, it remains an old boys club. And where and when women are given the
chance to run for office, the opportunity more often than not comes in districts
where they are long shots to win. But this year could be different.
Female candidates are already lining up to fill the long list of vacancies that
will be open this fall, and a few of those races should be competitive for the
women, a sign of hope for their gender.
Around these parts, Linda Greenstein, a 14th District assemblywoman who
represents portions of Middlesex and Mercer counties, is mulling a run for her
district's state Senate seat left open by longtime incumbent Peter Inverso, a
Republican who this week announced he won't seek re-election. Seema Singh,
who resigned from her post as New Jersey's ratepayer advocate hours after
Inverso announced he would retire, is also among the Democrats who want to run
for the post.
May other women in other districts around New Jersey join them. And may
more than just a handful be elected come November. New Jersey is nearly a
century behind the times. Now is the moment it caught up for the good of
its women and for the good of the state.
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