I wrote a feature on the amazing MHC alumnae who are running for political office for the summer issue of the Mount Holyoke Quarterly. Some are running for Congress, others are running for state representative or school board.
Since Hillary Clinton’s defeat in the 2016 presidential election, record numbers of women have declared their candidacy for elected office. This season, Mount Holyoke alumnae are both on the ballot and behind the scenes.
Emily Martz ’94 left her job as deputy director at the Adirondack North Country Association to run for U.S. Congress in her conservative upstate New York district. The decision came, in part, out of a conviction that Democrats weren’t successfully communicating that they represent white, working-class people. “In my area in particular, which is 97 percent white and low-income, Democrats as a party did not articulate that they stand for their own constituents,” says Martz.
It also grieved her to see political discourse in America become so polarized. “One of the big reasons that we had the results we did in 2016 is because we just weren’t talking to each other,” says Martz, who majored in history and minored in politics at Mount Holyoke. She began having as many conversations as she could with people who had different political backgrounds than her own. By May, she had decided to run for the U.S. House seat in her district: New York’s 21st.
Martz was one of a record-busting 467 women running for seats in the U.S. House this year,* according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics. (The previous record had been 298, set during the 2012 election cycle.) Record numbers of women are running for other political offices as well: In mid-May, for example, 47 women were running for governor, including Stacey Abrams, who on May 22 won Georgia’s primary and could become the nation’s first black female governor if she wins in November. There’s also been a surge of women running at the local level, for state Senate and House, city council and school board. Most of these female candidates are left-leaning: 352 of those 467 women who ran for Congress are Democrats. And all of the alumnae we were able to identify for this article share this party affiliation. The 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump — a candidate with no political experience — over Hillary Clinton, who had many years of experience, including eight years as senator from New York, has for some been a motivating force.
Mount Holyoke women have long pursued careers in public service — some as elected politicians and others in appointed positions. The first to come to the minds of many alumnae is, of course, Frances Perkins, class of 1902, who was appointed secretary of labor by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1933. But Mount Holyoke has also produced a host of other well-known alumnae who have held political office, including Ella Tambussi Grasso ’40, who in 1974 was elected Connecticut’s first female governor, New York congresswoman Nita Melnikoff Lowey ’59, who is currently serving her 15th term, and Elaine Chao ’75, current U.S. secretary of transportation and secretary of labor under President George W. Bush. To identify alumnae who may join the ranks of these whose stories and legacies we already know, we engaged with clubs and Facebook groups, put out a greater call on social media, and searched the Alumnae Association’s directory. We found several women who are running for office — some for the first time — and others with careers in the political arena.
The story continues here. And don't miss the sidebar on the women whose job is to remain behind the scenes—the recruiters, campaign managers, and policy advisors—from Mary Hughes ('74) to Kristen Elechko ('97).
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