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On the (PA) bench, it's the year of the woman
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| Parent(s) |
Race
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| Contributor | Scott³ |
| Last Edited | Scott³ Nov 30, 2007 08:18am |
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| Category | News |
| Media | Newspaper - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette |
| News Date | Thursday, November 8, 2007 02:00:00 PM UTC0:0 |
| Description | Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article.
An excerpt...
"In years past, depending on the partisan winds, Pennsylvania has been a red state or a blue state, but on Tuesday it became the pink state, propelling women into four of the five statewide judicial spots on the ballot.
Precisely why women produced a near sweep in a state ranked 44th in its percentage of female officeholders was hard to gauge, but Susan Carroll, a political science professor at Rutgers University and senior scholar at the Center for American Women and Politics, had two theories.
One, she said, could be reaction to scandal. In Harrisburg, a widening probe of legislative corruption has roiled the political waters. The second is a general restiveness by voters unhappy in the wake of the 2005 pay raise ruckus and looking for change.
"There have been studies that showed that in terms of voter stereotypes, voters perceive women candidates as more honest," Ms. Carroll said. "The other thing that we know is that women candidates tend to do very well in a climate where voters are looking for change. They represent people that are outside the system."
Notable in the pattern from Tuesday's vote was the election of Republicans Cheryl Allen and Jackie Shogan to Superior Court in a year in which even Republican stalwarts had largely expected Democrats to sweep.
"The tide was much more favorable to the Democrats," said Kent Gates, a Republican consultant who managed Ms. Shogan's campaign. "The interesting thing about the fact that the female candidates did so well is that they weren't 1-2-3 on the ballot. You had to jump around."
The major jumping, judging from an analysis of the voting patterns, took place in a dozen counties where neither party holds a registration edge larger than 5 percent. With party-line voting patterns weakened, voters consistently jumped up and down the ballot, electing Republicans Allen and Shogan along with Democratic candidate Christine Donohue. This pattern held wheth |
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