There's something a little… off… that's been nagging at my brain lately as I make my daily stop at the VT Dems newsdump site. Something about the image from the fundraiser. I'm a little slow sometimes, so it took me this long to realize what was wrong.
It's the pictures. Bernie, Leahy, Welch, Carleton. They're all men (and straight white men, to boot).
Of all the Dems statewide officeholders, only SoS Markowitz breaks the gender mold. Add in the de facto statewides leading the two Congressional bodies, and she joins only Speaker Symington against a backdrop which includes Shumlin, Spaulding and the Junior Salmon. Even the candidates being bandied about for Governor – Galbraith, Campbell, Dunne and Pollina – are all men.
This is a problem. All things being equal, the laws of statistics would seem to suggest that, over these several years, the numbers should look more even than the 17% women among the names listed above. Instead, that 17% would seem to represent a high mark.
In other words – all things are still not equal.
The reasons for this are a little more complicated than they used to be. At the grassroots level (among the town, county and state committees), you see a good gender mix. But among the true political class (and yes, Vermont – like every other state – has political classes) its a different story. Despite denials to the contrary, statewide faces are often groomed. Party folks do put out their feelers to hear who might be interested, but they still – more often than not – massage people who have that spark of interest into making the statewide plunge (as such folks expect a certain amount of massaging), hoping to turn that spark into a flame. But the folks who get the massaging are the ones that generally come from the subset of people that those on the inside consider viable and credible – and that means people in their circles.
So, a “good ol' boys network” is too strong a turn of phrase, as its nothing so overt or intentional, but it does equate to a tendency towards cliqueishness and staleness – a tendency that lends itself to real diversity even more slowly than the more public institutions at large.
Markowitz and Symington, with the help of people like former Governor Kunin, have been continually working over the years to train, support and encourage women to step into the political process, and those efforts have certainly borne fruit in the legislature. But legislative electoral politics (even in Senate campaigns) are still grassroots in a way that statewide races aren't, and never will be, making the statewide dynamics much more institutionally bound.
But the dynamics are different than they were a generation ago. To the extent that there's a glass ceiling at the top of the political ladder, it's now a very fragile one. As such, the responsibility for bringing it down is more of a shared burden. Party big dogs should be pushed to look outside their usual suspect cliques, but potential women candidates also need to step up to whack at that now-fragile ceiling. The list of potential candidates for Governor may be all men, but there was nothing stopping someone like Markowitz from throwing her hat into the ring, and it could be argued that she has a responsibility to do so. State Senators like Susan Bartlett or Claire Ayer could easily step up and take another whack at the statewide ceiling and easily leave a big piece of it in shards.
It's not enough just to say there's a wall, but it's permeable now. There is a burden of responsibility to actively permeate it.
But in the meantime, lets not advertise the gender gap so gleefully, 'kay? How about a new picture…