No More Petticoat Politics

In Baltimore's Little Italy last week, the early morning breakfasters at the Sandwich King took a break from their rehash of the Orioles game to greet a familiar face. "Morning, Senator," one man called from the counter. The title was premature, but it sounded good to Congresswoman Barbara Mikulski, who had just won the Democratic nomination for the Senate by beating Maryland Governor Harry Hughes and Representative Michael Barnes. Maryland's Republican nominee for the Senate, meanwhile, was celebrating her primary victory south of the Capital Beltway with a well-known admirer. Linda Chavez was spending some time away from Maryland to take part in a photo session at the White House, demonstrating her ties to a former employer, Ronald Reagan.

May the best man win? In politics, that expression threatens to become archaic. Three major contests on Election Day will be all-female affairs. Mikulski and Chavez are only the second pair of women in U.S. history to win the nominations of both major parties in a Senate campaign.* In Nebraska, State Treasurer Kay Orr, a Republican, is running against former Lincoln Mayor Helen Boosalis, a Democrat, in the country's first all-woman gubernatorial race. In Maryland's Second Congressional District, Democrat Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, Robert Kennedy's daughter, will oppose incumbent Helen Delich Bentley.

All told, women won 39 nominations for Senate and House seats and eight more for gubernatorial office this year. Earlier in the year, State Representative Judy Koehler was picked as the Illinois Republican challenger to incumbent Senator Alan Dixon. More recently, Alaska State Senator Arliss Sturgulewski swept past eight male rivals in a Republican gubernatorial primary, and Missouri Lieutenant Governor Harriett Woods handily took her state's % Democratic Senate nomination. Last week Connecticut State Representative Julie Belaga defeated heavily endorsed former State Senator Richard Bozzuto for the Republican nomination for Governor. Arizona's superintendent of public instruction, Carolyn Warner, took the Democratic nomination for Governor. In New York former Congresswoman Bella Abzug made a comeback after nearly ten years out of office, narrowly winning a Democratic nomination for Congress in suburban Westchester County.

Unlike Abzug, who became famous as a leader of the women's movement, many of the new candidates avoid feminist labels. They play the political game by traditional rules, rising through the party hierarchy. Their presence in elections has become so commonplace that voters have almost ceased to notice it. "I think the (gender) issue has been neutralized," says University of Nebraska Political Scientist Robert Sittig. "The Nebraska candidates had established themselves long before this election. I think people see them as career politicians." Irene Natividad, head of the National Women's Political Caucus, agrees: "There are more women in the political pipeline than there used to be." Although the number of women candidates for Congress is actually down this year from 1984, more women are running for state offices. The proportion of women in state legislatures has more than tripled since 1969, to 14.8%, according to the Center for the American Woman and Politics at Rutgers University, and comparable gains have occurred at the municipal level as well.