Since President Donald Trump took office last winter, the country has seen a spike in women around the country running for political office.
With the success of the Women’s March on Washington and, now, the growth of the #metoo movement, more and more women are getting their names on the ballot.
The Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University is tracking this increase. They’re seeing about double the number of potential female candidates running for Congress.
There are 79 women around the country running for governorships this year, 51 of them for open seats.
I spoke with Kelly Dittmar, a scholar at the Center, about this phenomenon they’re tracking and why she thinks it’s significant for the future of local and national politics.
In light of this rise of women in politics, we wanted to hear from one woman who has some experience in the area.
Debbie McCune Davis was first elected to the Arizona state Legislature in 1978 when she was just 27 years old and a mother with two young kids.
Since then, she’s served on and off as both a House and Senate member for more than three decades. She just left her seat last year.
I sat down with her recently to talk about her long career as a woman in local politics and how she was received when she first entered the Capitol building all those years ago.
Today she serves as the executive director of the Arizona Partnership for Immunization.
