Getting rid of the old ball and chains
by digby
It's hard for me to imagine that all the people in charge of redistricting sat down and said, "first, let's get rid of all the bitches" but it sure looks as if they did:
That Democrats became roadkill during the latest round of redistricting, mostly at the hands of Republican state legislatures, has been well documented. But less widely known is that the casualties at the state level often hit women lawmakers the hardest — eating into the slow but steady gains women have made in statehouses across the country.
[...]
In North Carolina, where Republicans controlled the redistricting process and women lawmakers have been particularly hard-hit, those dealt a tough blow by redistricting include state Sen. Linda Garrou, the deputy Democratic leader, and Rep. Martha Alexander, who has served for nearly 20 years and is a former co-chair of the redistricting committee. In all, 10 of 25 Democratic women lawmakers in the state were either “double bunked” — forced into a district with another incumbent — or drawn into heavily Republican districts.
“I just don’t see how that’s anything other than deliberate,” Carol Teal, executive director at Lillian’s List, a group working to elect pro-choice Democratic women in the Tarheel State, told TPM. “There’s no other category of people who took that kind of hit.”
“Republican legislative leaders seemed especially eager to target Democratic women in the General Assembly for defeat,” noted NC Policy Watch.
Republican women in leadership have been targeted, too. Take Colorado, for example, which has the highest percentage (40) of female lawmakers in the county and where Democrats essentially controlled the redistricting process via a special commission. “Three of the nine Republican women in the House will have to run in a primary with another GOP incumbent. Two of them, House Majority Leader Amy Stephens and Rep. B.J. Nikkel, the majority whip, are in leadership,” according to the Denver Post. Party primaries for legislative seats in Colorado are scheduled for June 26.
In New Jersey, where women accounted for 28 percent of the 2011 Legislature, they made up 70 percent of the legislators who retired as a result of redistricting.
“The impact of the new map has been especially harsh on incumbent Democratic assemblywomen, with one quarter of them leaving the legislature,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics.
Walsh believes the impact of redistricting could be even worse than the numbers indicate.
“Much of what goes on, unfortunately, is very non-transparent, so it’s hard to figure out exactly what happened,” she told TPM.
This could be a coincidence (or partly a coincidence.) But whatever it is, it's a sad comment on this country. We're already way behind most other nations in national female representation and this will probably make it worse. If women are being run out of politics at the state level it's hard to see where the new blood for federal office comes from.
(This chart says we rank number 78. You have to scroll waaay down to find us.)
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