GOP women’s group rolls out endorsements ahead of contested races

Winning for Women, a group dedicated to electing Republican women to office, rolled out its latest round of endorsements on Thursday ahead of November’s general election in a list released exclusively to The Hill.

The group threw its support behind Georgia Sen. Kelly Loeffler’s (R) candidacy in the state’s special Senate election, where she will face off against 20 other challengers, including Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) and Democrats Matt Lieberman and Raphael Warnock.

The top two finishers in the race will go head-to-head in January if one candidate does not win a majority in November. A recent Public Opinion Strategies poll showed a tight race, with Collins at 19 percent support, followed by Loeffler at 18 percent support, and Lieberman at 17 percent.

Meanwhile, on the House side, the group endorsed Republicans Mariannette Miller-Meeks in Iowa’s 2nd District and Claire Chase in New Mexico’s 2nd District ahead of the states’ June 2 primaries.

Miller-Meeks is seen as the favorite to win her five-person Republican primary, while Chase currently leads her primary opponents in fundraising.

The Cook Political Report rates both districts as “toss-ups” ahead of November’s general election.

The group also endorsed Tiffany Shedd in Arizona’s 1st District, Mary Miller in Illinois’s 15th district, and Renee Swann in Texas’s 17th District.

Miller-Meeks, Chase, and Shedd are members of the National Republican Congressional Campaign’s Young Guns program.

The latest round of endorsements comes as Republicans experience an uptick in GOP women running for office, with 195 women from the party filing to run in House races this cycle, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. That number is up from a previous record of 133 during the Tea Party wave in 2010.

“More women than ever before are running for Congress, and these represent the best of them,” Winning for Women Political Director Micah Yousefi said in a statement. “Not only will Winning For Women’s PAC provide critical hard-dollar support to their campaigns, but it will also activate on their behalf a grassroots army of 800,000 members nationwide.”