Funding for To the Contrary is provided by E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation, the Park Foundation and the Charles A. Frueauff Foundation This week on To the Contrary Elections have consequences, positive and negative.

What will the 2022 midterm election mean for women in the country?

(MUSIC) Hello, I'm Bonnie Erbe.

Welcome to To the Contrary, a discussion of news and social trends from diverse perspectives..

This week, a deep dive into how women voted, understanding that they, we , are not a monolith.

We'll also focus in on how the vote could change Congress, the Governors mansions and Statehouses across the nation.

And what that means for women.

Joining us today is our woman thought leader Debbie Walsh, the director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

Welcome, Debbie.

How are you?

I'm good, Bonnie.

And how are you doing?

I've gotten a little caught up on some sleep from election night.

I bet you did So first, please tell our viewers what is CAWP as we know at the Center for American Women and Politics.

What do you do?

So the Center for American Women and Politics were actually celebrating an extended 50th anniversary.

Congratulations.

Thank you.

It occurred in the midst of COVID.

So it's one of those kinds of anniversaries.

But for over 50 years, we have been monitoring and tracking and studying and analyzing women's relationship to American politics.

So we're the keeper of the data.

Who's running?

Who's holding office?

We look at women as voters, but we're also asking important questions about those numbers, like what difference does it make to have women serving and how do they get there is a different than their than their male counterparts.

And then we also have programs to encourage more women's participation, whether it's college women through our new leadership program or our nonpartisan or bipartisan campaign training programs, Ready to Run.

And those programs are running in about 25 states around the country and making a difference in who's running and who's thinking about being more engaged in politics and hopefully changing the face of power in this country.

Let's look at the 2022 midterms, which were historic in ways that I will ask you to describe in terms of what was supposed to be a last minute red wave never materialized.

And in fact, when you compare the results of the election in this year compared to past midterms, it was absolutely historic.

Tell me the role women played in all that.

You know, we didn't have the same kind of historic numbers of women candidates that we have had as in the past two cycles.

2018 and 2020 were really historic records.

There were some bits of history in terms of our candidates, black women, candidates for governor, for the United States Senate, Latinas for Congress, but overall, not those kind of records, except for at the gubernatorial level where we did see record numbers and we are seeing a record number of women who will be serving as governor as a result of this election.

And as we all know, that gubernatorial level has been a tough nut to crack for women in terms of breaking a record we've been at nine was our record and we started out there in 2004.

We've gone down a little over time, back up to nine.

We were at nine going into this election.

But as of January, when the new governors are sworn in, we will have 12 women who will be serving as governor across the country, eight incumbents who were reelected, and four new women governors, still largely Democrats, a handful of Republican women who will be serving as governor.

Some historic firsts on that front.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the first woman elected governor in the state of Arkansas, but also some other firsts on the Democratic side.

Maura Healey, in Massachusetts, the first woman elected governor of the state.

And in New York, Kathy Hochul became governor because she ascended to that position from being the lieutenant governor.

But she was elected in her own right, the first New York state governor, who is a woman elected to that position.

And also, we have the first two openly lesbian women governors in Oregon and Tina Kotek in Oregon and Maura Healey in Massachusetts.

So some important firsts and some important history there.

We also have Katie Hobbs, who has defeated Carrie Lake.

She is not the first woman governor to serve in that in that position.

She's actually the fifth woman to serve as governor of the state of Arizona, which is also a record.

From what you're saying, it sounds like women didn't really play much of a role in turning this.

I wouldn't say that women didn't play a role.

I think.

So what.

Role?

Playing a role?

They played a role both as voters.

And I think there are individual stories where they played a role so that there will be one new woman serving in the United States Senate.

And we are still expecting Lisa Murkowski's race is still outstanding.

But with ranked choice voting, I'll probably be another week before we know.

But but in the House, we're looking at maybe breaking the record by one or two.

But then I think you also have individual cases where women really played a role.

I think you can't underestimate the role that Gretchen Whitmer played in the state of Michigan.

She won her reelection, but she also flipped both the House and the Senate in the state of Michigan.

From red to blue, all of the statewide elected offices were those women who were there were reelected.

And I think, you know, not she hasn't been talked enough about, but has the potential, I think has set herself up as a real potential for a presidential candidate down the road.

So much attention has been on Ron DeSantis and what he did in Florida that I think Gretchen Whitmer's accomplishment in Michigan has been a little bit lost.

So I think there you have an example of women playing a role, but I think we're still plowing through the exit poll data.

But we know that women outvoted men and we know that.

And I want.

By what We don't know the numbers yet, we know, for instance, in the in the last presidential, about 10 million more women voted.

Athan men.

I mean, women have been historically out voting men and voting differently than men, more likely to vote for the Democratic candidate than men, less likely to vote for the Republican candidate.

And, of course, women are not monolithic.

There are different groups of women are more likely to be Republicans, others more likely to be Democrat.

But overall.

But I also think that what you saw was an issue that really spoke to women, which was that Dobbs decision, which there was a huge flurry right after the decision.

And I think that a lot of the pollsters and a lot of the pundits underestimated the anger that women felt and thought it had subsided and everything had shifted to the economy.

But I think you saw Democratic candidates staying on message, talking about the abortion issue.

This really mattered to women and it energized them and got them to the polls.

And we're seeing in state after state where that issue rises up to either surpassing the economic issues or almost matching the economic issues.

And it used to be that you would just the conventional wisdom was, yes, they care about the abortion issue, but it's always about the economy.

But let me jump in here for a second, Debbie, because I was a teenager, freelance reporter for The Washington Post, among other places in the seventies when Roe was handed down.

And I thought, oh, my gosh, women are going to vote on abortion forever because they obviously really they're the ones who got the court filled with Democrats over the decades.

And and the ones who and and moderate Republicans who supported abortion rights.

And they really were the ones who got Roe, you know, got that decision handed down by the Supreme Court.. Now, 50 years later, it's completely turned around.

But in the interim, in the seventies, eighties, not really into the nineties, abortion was still the number one issue for particularly young women, women under the age of 40 or so.

Who women table for the most part, women capable of of getting pregnant and then it died as an issue really didn't matter.

The economy, national security all these other issues came up that mattered more to women.

Bonnie I don't know that it didn't matter more, but it didn't feel threatened and that that I think there was an assumption that if it was settled law that this was, they didn't , wom didn't have to worry about it.

And so the choice movement didn't do a good enough job explaining to women that it was not anything but settled.

I think that one of the things that I hope people have learned between 2016 and now is elections have real consequences.

And I think explaining to your average voter that who you vote for president has implications for the court.

That's a reach.

That's a complicated message to send, as opposed to talking about very specific issues and public policy issues that are here and now and what the president can do and sign in.

So that has been a challenge.

But I think what we saw in 2016 as a result of that election, we saw this wave of women being much more engaged.

We saw it in 2018.

We even saw it in 2020, engaged as a pushback on the election of Donald Trump, then I think what we saw in this cycle in terms of voters was, again, a reinforcement of this idea that elections have consequences.

You know, if you elect somebody who then changes the court in the in the dramatic way the court has shifted, it will have an impact on the issues that you care about.

And I think that became crystal clear and it was an energizer.

But is it going to be an energizer for the next half century that it's likely it's going to take to appoint enough justices?

I think the pro-life side has done a better job of staying focused on this issue.

And I do not think that the pro-choice movement has done as good a job focusing on this issue as it could have.

I think that the pro-life movement focused on the states.

I think the pro-choice movement left the states.

They sort of feels like it's it's in the hands of the federal government.

That's where we put our focus.

And so a lot of the state organizations did not have the resources and the organization behind them.

And now we're seeing a scrambling to try to do work at the state level because the states clearly are going to matter for quite a while, as you point out.

So I think there has been I'm talking about on the pro-choice side, I think there was a taking it for granted that it was for settled law and that and that that worked didn't need there wasn't as much of an energy and focus on that.

I do think on the pro-life side, there was a clear focus.

There was a mission.

And I think you're absolutely right, they knew that Donald Trump would deliver for them on judges and they were willing to put aside other things in order to get and to stay focused on what is the goal.

Now you're seeing a shift on the pro choice side looking at states, and that's what we're going to be looking at as we move forward, because we did not see as I say, we did not see those kinds of records.

We did see a record number of women running for the state legislature this time, but not on the Democratic side, only on the Republican side.

I think what we're going to be watching for as we move forward is what happens for women candidates as a result of the Dobbs decision.

The decision came too late in the cycle.

By the time that decision was handed down, filing deadlines had passed.

So we were really only looking at what would this do for women in terms of voting?

40 years ago, I remember a pro-choice nonprofit leader telling me that the reason the Democrats focused nationally and not on the states was they didn't have the funds to be lobbying and supporting candidates in all 50 states.

So they kind of had to stick with it nationally.

Again, this is a long time ago, but that's that's what was told to me.

Do you remember when Howard Dean was the the chair of the National Democrats, the Democratic National Committee.

He was a 50 state guy.

Right.

He wanted to be in all playing in all 50 states.

And the reality is, is that the Republican Party did I mean, they were really looking at the states and they have they quietly started to work their way through and taking over legislatures.

And it it paid off.

And it's a it's an important level of office as well, because it's not just about the abortion issue, it's also about redistricting.

Right.

So it sets you up for what's going to happen, not just in your state legislative races, but your congressional races.

It's a hugely important level of office and we need to we need to focus on it.

I do want to just say one other thing about the governorships and why it's important to see these women.

And I do want to also point out that 12 women governors is not political parity.

Right.

We still we're still a ways away from seeing the kind of representation we want to see at that level.

But it's also important to remember that that is the level of office that is seen that in the United States Senate as the stepping stone to the presidency.

And so it's really critical that we see more women there to build that bench.

But it's also really important to note, and I think this is also really critical, which is those women of those 12 women, only one of them is a woman of color, Michelle Lujan Grisham, who is a Latina, the second Latina to ever serve as a governor.

We have yet in this country to ever elect a black woman governor.

We came close with Stacey Abrams both four years ago and this cycle.

But we need to take a hard look at what we do to make sure that black women, women of color are seen as viable candidates, that they're given the kind of support that they need early on.

And so that we get away from this notion that women of color are not electable statewide.

I want to shift back to something we kind of skipped over.

Where did Republican women do well this year?

Because the party as a whole, we know, didn't perform anything like most out of party, out of power parties function in an election year, which is to say that they gain a ton of seats for President George W. Bush it was 83.

He gained eight, lost rather, 83 House seats.

For President Obama he called it a shellacking.

It was 60 plus House seats in this, coming up in this election.

And it at the time of this taping, we still don't have the full tally, but it's looking like Democrats are not going to lose anything like that number of seats.

Meanwhile, Democratic Republican women, how did they do?

Well, in the general election, we think that at the congressional level, we're going to be at about the same party breakdown as we are now.

So not any, no sort of drama shifts there for women partisanly.

The place where we think that Republican women will break a record clearly is going to be at the state legislative level.

The Democratic women may as well.

But we again, we have as the time that we're taping a lot like almost 350, too close to call races for the state legislature around the country.

So we're a ways away from knowing those numbers.

And at the gubernatorial level, you know, there are, women made a contribution for the Republican Party in terms of getting reelected.

You know, some of the like Kay Ivey, a Kim Reynolds in Iowa.

The, the new election of of Huckabee Sanders in in Arkansas.

But, you know, some of the women who are running were part of this group of election deniers that got turned back in the most visible example of that is Carrie Lake out in Arizona, who probably will be denying the outcome of her own election after this.

But but I think the women who went down that path confronted some of the same pushback that the men did who were you know, this was the year that they were talking about the denying of the deniers.

So it's a the partisan story is a pretty much a status quo at the congressional level with a little bit of change at the state legislative level.

So moving forward, will the Dobbs decision, will the lack of abortion care or even women's women's medical care be an issue for women?

I think what there are six or eight states now that have banned abortions.

Will young college women leave those states and not stay there afterwards because they don't want to live in a place where they have to become a criminal if they want to get an abortion?

How long will the memory of having of having had legal abortion rights remain with particularly young women voters and young women and voters of color were really going to the polls in record numbers this year and pulled it out for the Democrats in a lot of cases.

So how long do you keep that?

Will it go on until abortion is is legal on a national basis again, or will it hit, peter out?

So, Bonnie, that I feel like you're asking the $64,000 question to predict into the future what will happen.

But I think it will fall on the activists and the party, the Democratic Party, to keep this issue alive.

And I think the reality is it will be kept alive because of the activities that go on in state legislatures.

So, you know, every time there is one of these bills passed that restricts women's access to an abortion or an issue is on the ballot, and that is restricting it brings it back up.

And I do think that it will fall on the folks who do the organizing around this issue to keep this alive, to keep focusing on it.

You know, one of the things that came up in the last election cycle was did the Democrats put too much emphasis in their ads on abortion?

And there was a lot of question, oh, no, they should they should be talking about the economy.

And they they did talk about both things.

But we saw lots and lots of ads uniformly, you know, fill in the blank of who the candidate is.

He or she is too extreme for our state on the abortion issue.

Abortion without exceptions.

That energized voters, that energized women voters to come out.

It got them engaged.

And if that keeps going, you know, that's the lesson to learn out of this election.

The question is, will these abortion questions beyond ballots in states where it can go on the ballot is a constitutional question we saw every time it appeared on a ballot in this election cycle, a woman's right to reproductive health care was preserved by voters.

Sometimes they voted for Republican candidates, but still voted to make sure that women had access, that the restrictions on abortion were kept to a minimum.

So I think it's going to fall to the party and it's going to fall to the activists to keep this message going and to keep motivating women voters and to make it clear that these elections have consequences and that women need to be engaged as voters and as candidates speaking for themselves about the issues that they care about.

Women came out in response to I thought you meant Republican ads that said the person on the other side is for abortion on demand.

No the ads that we were seeing around the country were from Democratic candidates talking about the fact that whoever the Republican candidate was who was running was too extreme on the abortion issue.

Yeah, but we also saw a lot of almost, I would call it, going for blood ads from Republicans calling, you know, moderate Democrats who are pro-choice, out of touch with the mainstream and wanting, you know, extreme abortion rights.

And that may have done just as much to get women out there to see that and say, go, that's crazy.

That's not true.

Well, maybe that maybe that's also part of the equation.

But the reality is, is that the majority of Americans favor the Roe decision.

So there was an extremeness to the Dobbs decision, throwing it back to the States and then seeing some of these really restrictive laws being passed around abortion, with no exceptions, you're talking about no exceptions for the life of the mother.

Cases of rape and incest.

That really was a bridge too far and it was a bridge too far for a lot of Republican women.

And we saw that where they would in some of these states where abortion was on the ballot, literally on the ballot, like in a state like Kentucky, Rand Paul won reelection.

But the the bill to restrict women's access to abortion was defeated.

So it has to be seen as the that's where public opinion is.

And but it has to be kept alive and it has to be something that is talked about and is part of the motivation and the message so that voters stay engaged with this issue moving forward.

All right, Debbie Walsh, head of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

Thank you so much for your time.

That's it for this edition.

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To the Contrary provided by the E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Foundation The Park Foundation and the Charles A. Frueauff Foundation.