READY TO RUMBLE
In early February, just one day after the House banished Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from congressional committees for incendiary behavior and two days after GOP lawmakers decided by secret ballot to allow Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney to retain her leadership position despite her vote to impeach Donald Trump, a third drama involving Republican women was unfolding in upstate New York. In a case over disputed ballots in the state’s 22nd congressional district, a judge ruled in favor of Republican Claudia Tenney, handing her victory over Democrat Anthony Brandisi by a mere 109 votes—thereby settling the last undecided race of the 2020 election. That decision makes Tenney the 38th Republican woman to serve in Congress this year, smashing the previous record of 30 set in 2006 and more than doubling the number of female GOP representatives in 2018.
The rise of Republican women has been the one bright spot in the 2020 election for an otherwise battered GOP, which lost not just the presidency but also effective control of the Senate with the surprising win of two Democratic first-timers in Georgia’s runoff races in January. But anyone expecting these female lawmakers to act as a tempering force within the party—Republican women as a group historically have been more moderate than their male counterparts and more open to negotiating with colleagues across the aisle—is likely in for a big surprise. This class of GOP congresswomen looks to be the most conservative in history, with a larger-than-usual number whose views are sharply to the right and who are apparently in no mood for bipartisanship.
“This cycle, we’ve elected some Republican women who are quite strident in their positions—more strident than we’ve ever seen before,” says former New Jersey Governor Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican and former Cabinet official in the George W. Bush administration. “They didn’t come to Washington to compromise.”
“We’ve elected some REPUBLICAN WOMEN who are more strident than we’ve ever seen before. They didn’t come to Washington to COMPROMISE.”
To be sure, not every newly-elected Republican woman is a violence-espousing conspiracy theorist like Greene, whose antics have included heckling a Parkland school shooting survivor and seeming to endorse the execution of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Nor are they a Glock-toting gun-rights activist like Colorado Representative Lauren Boebert or an outspoken firebrand like Illinois Representative Mary Miller, who took flack for saying at the pro-Trump rally before the Capitol riot, “Hitler was right about one thing.” A few of the new GOP congresswomen have even expressed willingness to work with Democrats, especially representatives like Tenney who narrowly flipped seats from blue to red. For them, seeking common ground is political common sense.
Still, most of the record 19 first-term GOP women in the House won big,
