"Strength and honor are her clothing;
She shall rejoice in time to come."
Proverbs 31:25
Texas Tribune this morning:
For female Republicans looking to become freshmen in the Texas Legislature, last year was the year of the woman — or, if you want to include both of them, women.
Candy Noble and Angela Paxton were the only freshman female Republicans elected to the Texas House and Senate, respectively, amid a surge of women running for office.
Noble and Paxton exemplify what’s widely viewed as a dearth of female GOP lawmakers in the Legislature. In the Senate, the number of Republican women serving is at an all-time high, but they make up less than a third of the chamber’s GOP-held seats. Across the rotunda, the gender gap is far more visible: Of the 83 Republicans serving, six are women. Democratic women, by comparison, hold 27 of the party’s seats.
As recently as 2012, 19 Republican women served in the House.
To be sure,
this topic warrants discussion. Conservatives have been arguing (
correctly) for years about inherent biological differences between men and women. Thus, it is only logical that we should respect those inherent differences in political communication. Republicans
should take heed.
However, coming from the Trib, one cannot help but think back to
the last Republican primary:
That would be incumbent state representative Ernest 'Dirty Ernie' Bailes. During the last campaign, Bailes called his young, female, opponent a "prostitute" because she worked with a pro-life organization that wasn't aligned with the former speaker. It was
grotesquely sexist.
Here's the thing: The Texas Tribune,
literally,
didn't cover it.
If the Texas Tribune is honestly curious about why there aren't more Republican women in the legislature,
they might want to start there.
Consider what we said at the time:
#TXLEGE: Bailes calling Cook a "prostitute" SHOULD be litmus test for Toxic Capitol Culture....
....
Since the Daily Beast reports about the culture of chronic sexual abuse at the Texas Capitol came out, we're heard a lot of talk about part of the solution is for more women to run for office. To be honest, this website agrees with a lot of that talk. So what happens when a young woman runs for the Texas legislature against a male incumbent with a lousy record?!?
Emily Kebodeaux Cook is a well known activist who has worked with Texas Right to Life the past several legislative sessions. She's currently running against liberal Republican Ernest Bailes for a house seat north of Houston. This is a textbook case of a young woman running against the corrupt status quo.
....
Ironically, we've believed for some time that this race was a good test for those who believe "we need more women in politics." As stated above, this is a textbook case of a young woman running against a male-dominated status quo. But, in this case, the male in question happens to be a reliable vote to preserve said status quo who enjoys support from Democrats.
Then the male in question calls the female in question a "prostitute."
....
Bottom Line: This race was always going to be an interesting test of the philosophical consistency of those who believe 'more women in politics' is (at least part of) the solution to recent scandals. And that was before the pro-status quo male incumbent called his conservative female challenger a "prostitute." Won't it be interesting to see the reaction (or lack thereof) in this case....
As we suspected would happen, "lack thereof" was an accurate prediction.
Now, a year later, the Texas Tribune wonders why there aren't more Republican women in the legislature.
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Ironically enough, we wrote the above words before we
saw what we saw at the last RPT convention.
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In fairness to the Trib, they did interview Cook
for the article:
That’s not to say women aren’t trying. During last year’s primaries, Emily Kebodeaux Cook, a first-time political candidate, was one of many Republican women who challenged male incumbents or ran for open seats at the Legislature.
In Cook’s case, she ran against incumbent Rep. Ernest Bailes of Shepherd, who won the primary with 59 percent of the vote, compared with Cook’s 41 percent. Cook said she ran because she disagreed with Bailes' voting record during the past legislative session. She added, however, that “the Republican Party will be stronger overall when it’s not just one side of the aisle that has elected officials who look like our daughters.”
But campaigning as a Republican woman comes with its own set of hurdles. Cook said when voters brought up her gender as she and her team went canvassing, those questions often came from other women — rather than men — which she found “astonishing.”
“While a man might ask me where I stood on policy matters,” Cook said, “the first question from another woman would be, ‘How can you balance raising a young family with serving in elected office?’”
That's fine. It certainly
is interesting that female voters are more likely to ask female candidates about work/life balance. But come on.
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Bottom Line: If you ignore a malicious creep calling a young woman a "prostitute," you're not in a position to decry the afore mentioned creeps re-election.
