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N.C. voters accept female candidates
Perceptions change as more seek office
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Published: May 12, 2008
RALEIGH
Sen. Hillary Clinton lost out in North Carolina last week, but most of the other women running for statewide office were victorious in Tuesday's primary. Some see the results as a sign that 2008 will be a landmark year for the increasing number of North Carolina women seeking top positions in public life.
"I think that that may show the progressive nature of North Carolina citizens," said June Atkinson, the state schools superintendent who is running for re-election and won her primary on Tuesday. "I think it also shows that women have been working to be prepared to run for public office. I know that there are opportunities for women to get that preparation."
Eleven women were on the ballot last week running in primaries for statewide elective office. Seven of them won their races by beating male opponents. An eighth, Winston-Salem's Mary Fant Donnan, was the top vote-getter in the Democratic primary for commissioner of labor, and may face a runoff.
The group of women is diverse, and so are the offices they are running for. They range from the state's very top elective offices to less prominent statewide positions, such as labor commissioner or N.C. Court of Appeals.
In November, the U.S. Senate race in North Carolina will pit two female candidates against each other: the Republican incumbent, Elizabeth Dole, and her Democratic challenger, Kay Hagan, a state senator from Greensboro. Both Dole and Hagan won landslide victories Tuesday over lesser-known opponents.
The governor's race also features a woman: Lt. Gov. Beverly Perdue beat State Treasurer Richard Moore in a hard-fought Democratic primary. Perdue, who is trying to become the state's first female governor, now faces another male candidate, Charlotte mayor Pat McCrory.
Perdue frequently bills herself as a fighter, and a central theme of her campaign is ensuring that every boy and girl in North Carolina "should have a shot at being somebody."
It's a theme that comes from her life experience. When Perdue first ran for public office in 1986, she ran for a seat in the N.C. House of Representatives. Lots of people, she said, "looked me in the face and said, ‘You can't win. A woman could never win that race.' And we stood up and did just what we've done forever. We banded together with the common theme that we can do it."
Perdue won that race -- and has won every election that she has entered since then.
Women politicians say that being a woman running for office comes with both advantages and hurdles.
For one thing, they say, some voters will automatically vote for a woman, especially in down-ballot races in which they don't know much about any of the candidates.
"I think a lot of women do vote for women. I get that pretty frequently. If they just don't really know or can't differentiate between candidates, women will often default into voting for women," said Janet Cowell, a Democrat running for state treasurer who beat two male opponents in Tuesday's primary.
Women also tend to vote in larger numbers than men. In Tuesday's primary, women made up 57 percent of the electorate in the Democratic primary, according to exit polls.
On the other hand, some voters have the opposite reaction when they see a woman's name on the ballot. Atkinson said that during her first run for superintendent four years ago, her campaign manager heard from one voter who said she would never vote for a woman for that office. The voter was a woman herself.
And once women reach the halls of power, they can face obstacles.
"Certainly, there are challenges to networking and socializing. A lot of things happen on the golf course and a lot of things happen at sporting events, and that's still harder to break into as a woman," Cowell said.
But those obstacles diminish as more and more women are elected.
Several decades ago, when women first began breaking into the ranks of elected officials, they often did so in positions that are traditionally thought of as women's territory, such as serving on local school boards. But now women are running for all offices, from president on down.
On North Carolina's Council of State -- a 10-person group made up of the state's top elected executive-branch officials -- three current members are women. But that number could increase to as many as six this November.
That's because six of the Council of State offices have at least one woman running in the general election. The offices are governor, state treasurer, secretary of state, state auditor, labor commissioner and schools superintendent.
Few fields have been more traditionally male-dominated than the world of finance, but Cowell stands a good chance of becoming North Carolina's first female treasurer, making her the state's top investor and the overseer of an $80 billion public pension fund.
"Women now are perceived as being good financial managers," Cowell said.
She recalls that when she graduated in 1995 from the Wharton business school at the University of Pennsylvania only 25 percent of the graduates were women.
"With each year, more and more women break those barriers," Cowell said.
■ James Romoser can be reached at 919-210-6794 or at jromoser@wsjournal.com.
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