Yesterday's three state primaries were not so good for the whole "Year of the Republican Woman" thing. As I noted in my preview, the few women running for the elite positions had no chance. And Jean Shudorf, who had a real chance to win the primary to succeed Tiahrt, lost.
Yesterday produced two women GOP congressional nominees -- in addition to the three incumbents up for re-election. One, Robyn Hamlin, is a sacrificial lamb in a very, very heavily Democratic district against a popular incumbent. The other is Vicky Hartzler, who has an outside chance of ousting incumbent Democrat Ike Skelton in the Missouri 4th.
We have now passed the 2/3 mark in this year's congressional primaries, if I've counted correctly (294 of 435), and Hartzler is only the 5th Republican woman to win won one [win won?] of those primaries in a district where there's any realistic hope of victory in November.
More importantly, Tiahrt's open seat was one of 6 yesterday where the Republican is considered more likely than not to win in November (along with Moran's, Moore's, Ehlers's, Hoekstra's, and Blunt's). By my count, there are 26 such seats in all, and primaries have been held in 18 of them -- with men winning all 18 GOP nominations.
Of the 8 remaining, 4 have no women on the GOP ballot. Of the other 4, two of them have their primaries tomorrow, in Tennessee.
Both are real, serious possibilities. In the 3th district, vacated by Zach Wamp's gubernatorial run, Robin Smith is one of two frontrunning candidates. In the 6th, a heavily Republican-leaning district where Democrat Bart Gordon is retiring, two of the three GOP frontrunners are women: Diane Black and Lou Ann Zelenick.
The remaining two are in the Florida 25th, where Marili Cancio has little chance of victory, and the Arizona 3rd, where three women are running in the 10-person field.
One more quick note about yesterday's primaries. I mentioned in yesterday's post that of the 55 state senate seats up for election in Michigan and Missouri, 4 are currently held by Republican women -- none of whom are running for re-election. The results from yesterday: a total of just 3 Republican women advanced to the November ballot in those 55 races.
Latest Slideshows
