Republicans try to win back the women’s vote

Republican Party leaders are trying to prevent the Democrats’ “gender gap” advantage among female voters from becoming a chasm in November 2008.

Democratic women, from Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), are taking center stage in next year’s election, while Oprah Winfrey has lent her star power to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in rallying female voters to support him.

{mosads}Without the advantage of such celebrities, House GOP leaders are looking at other ways to bring more women into the Republican fold. Earlier this year, they tapped Rep. Kay Granger (R-Texas), the vice chairwoman of the conference and the most senior GOP woman in the House, to lead an important campaign to woo women voters, who have been voting in higher numbers than men in recent years.

Granger, along with Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-N.C.), the former chairwoman of the Senate Republican election arm, has formed a group called Women Impacting the Nation (WIN), a joint fundraising committee with the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). The group plans to sponsor outreach events to attract female voters in 12 competitive GOP races next year, starting with freshman Republican Rep. Peter Roskam’s swing district in Illinois.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has already targeted that district, among others, with radio ads blasting House Republicans for their votes against expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

Granger also plans to host a conservative women’s summit in D.C. next year, similar to events that the late Rep. Jennifer Dunn (R-Wash.) put on in the 1990s when she was a part of the House GOP leadership team. Those meetings lapsed after passage of the 2002 campaign-finance bill, which prevented lobbyists and corporations from sponsoring such events.

Granger’s group has hosted two fundraisers so far, collecting $65,000 to help underwrite the plans, and she wants to make a concerted push in 2008 in raising money and Republican awareness of their plans. House GOP leaders plan to promote WIN at their annual retreat to the Greenbrier Resort in January.

The NRCC just managed to dig itself out of debt this past quarter, and Granger realizes that most donations should be directed to the party’s main reelection efforts. But she said most of WIN’s activities should not cost anything except time and commitment.

“Women are going to be deciding this election, so what we have to get across to women voters is that ‘We’re listening to you and care about the issues that matter to you most,’ ” she told The Hill. She highlighted economic concerns and taxes as two GOP strengths that could attract women, who make up the largest percentage of new small-business owners.

The stakes are high this year. A new Lifetime/Zogby poll released Wednesday found that women are poised for a record voter turnout. Ninety-three percent of women polled say they plan to vote in November, while 62 percent said voting in the 2008 presidential election is more important than in past elections.

If the past two presidential elections are any indication, Democrats stand to gain the most from more women voting next year unless Republicans make significant strides. In the 2004 presidential election, the voter turnout rate was 60 percent among women and 56 percent among men, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And 67.3 million women, compared with 58.5 million men, voted for president.

As the former mayor of Fort Worth who raised three children as a single mother, Granger said she is acutely aware of the stress women face and what they care about the most — education, healthcare and financial security during retirement.

 “Women are outliving men, so they naturally have the most to worry about when it comes to retirement,” she said.
Granger recognizes that terrorism is still a major issue for GOP women but argues that “security moms” will not decide the election this time around. Accordingly, the GOP needs to move beyond the issue as their chief talking point if they want to attract more female voters to the party, she said.        

The new Lifetime/Zogby findings, however, suggest a more mixed picture. Republican women still choose security and terrorism as their issues of greatest concern, while Democrats rank the issue 10th and independents rank it eighth.

Healthcare, the second most pressing concern among Democrats and independents, ranks seventh for Republican women.

 In some ways, Granger’s legislative experience reflects these concerns. She helped win enactment of tax-free savings accounts for higher education expenses and served on the healthcare task force, but she diverged from her party on social issues. She is in favor of abortion rights, applauded the government’s approval of RU-486 and supports embryonic stem cell research.

Granger toed the party line on the SCHIP bill, however, and voted against the $35 billion increase to the program. She said she believes Republicans need to tell voters exactly why they opposed the expansion, which would have brought the total of children covered to 10 million. Republicans in fact created the program, she said, and have supported it from the very beginning. The problem with the Democrats’ plan, she argued, is that it would open the program to adults and illegal immigrants at the expense of low-income children.

The 2008 election will be a testing ground for that argument, as well as for Democrats’ efforts to cast Republicans as being opposed to helping poor children.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), who is supporting Clinton, said Republicans face a tough challenge in attracting female voters after many GOPers voted against SCHIP expansion and an increase in the minimum wage.

“Their agenda is not a women’s agenda,” she said. “And it’s going to take more than a bunch of women Republicans clustered together at a press conference to win women voters.”

Granger acknowledges that her party has a bad track record of addressing the gender gap head on and promoting their strongest women within the party ranks. Dunn, for instance, often expressed frustration with the leadership of then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) and -Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). Her inability to move up the leadership ladder eventually contributed to her decision to leave.

This year is different, according to House GOP leaders.

 “I can’t speak for former … Congresses,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said. “But this leadership team understands the importance of reaching out to women and also having dynamic GOP women serving as spokespersons for the party, communicating to women across the country about Republican solutions to address the concerns of American families. Kay is a big part of our efforts.”

Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Fla.), who is also active in the WIN effort, said GOP leaders are serious about their support.

“The guys get it,” she said.