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Daily Record
Record number of women win seats
By AP from dailyrecord.com on the Web, November 7,
2007
TRENTON,
N.J.
-- A record number of women will be in the state Legislature come January.
Women gained two Senate seats in Tuesday's election, bringing the number of
female senators to nine, and were poised to pick up at least nine seats in the
Assembly. The gains mean female
lawmakers will comprise more than a quarter
of the Legislature when it reconvenes in January.
"It' huge," said an almost giddy Debbie
Walsh, director of the Center for American Women in
Politics at
Rutgers University.
"There has been a concerted effort on the part of a lot of people, as well as
efforts by the parties and women's
organizations, to try to do something to turn this around."
The banner election year for female candidates in
New Jersey
started with at least 64 women seeking state Senate and Assembly seats; it was
unclear from election paperwork and the person's name whether another candidate
was a man or a woman.
New Jersey has
long endured the dubious distinction of being one
of the lowest-ranked states
when it comes to the number of women in the
Legislature. As recently as 2005, less than 16
percent of the Senate and Assembly were
comprised of women — about the same percentage as in 1927, according
to Women Advocating for Good Government, a group dedicated to getting more women
elected.
This year, a combination of retirements, resignations and more women being
nominated led up to the record number of women winning seats.
"One thing that has been serving as a gatekeeper for women in past elections was
incumbency," said Brigid C. Harrison, a political science and law professor at
Montclair State
University. "With the number of retirements
and resignations there was the chance for women to make tremendous gains.
The parties actually saw that and nominated women to seats they could win."
One example is Dana Redd, a Camden
City councilwoman tapped by the state Democratic
Party to run for the seat vacated by Democratic incumbent
Wayne Bryant, who awaits trial on federal corruption charges.
Redd beat her male Republican challenger
easily, 63 to 37 percent.
"It's interesting that the party got behind her," said Ingrid Reed, director of
the New Jersey Project at Rutgers
University's Eagleton Institute of Politics.
"That's really unusual — selecting a woman to run for a safe seat."
Harrison
agreed. In prior years the few women who got the nod from party bosses
were put up as "sacrificial lambs — and they'd lose to entrenched incumbents,"
she said.
Women claimed or reclaimed Senate seats in nine of the state's 40 legislative
districts on Tuesday.
The state's most visible Senate race featured two women, incumbent Sen. Ellen
Karcher and Assemblywoman Jennifer Beck. In conceding to the Republican
challenger late Tuesday, Karcher said knew that come January her husband "was
looking forward to having his wife back."
The races for 80 Assembly seats feature 48 women candidates, including 14
incumbents and 42 from the two major parties. At least 24 women were
elected or re-elected.
Before Tuesday's election, there were 23
women in the 120-member state Legislature — 7 senators and 16 assembly.
(Emphasis Added)
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