Women of Influence: The Race for the Presidency in 2020
We conclude this series with a look at the race for the White House in 2020, though it began much earlier than that. By May of 2019, over 20 candidates had declared their intention to seem the presidential nomination for one of the two major political parties, mostly for the Democratic Party, as the Republican had an incumbent President who was seeking re-election. The year produced a record number of women seeking the Presidency. While none were successful in securing the top spot on the ticket, it was nevertheless a remarkable event, and one that may well evidence a tide coming in for future elections, increasing the possibility of seeing the election of the first female US President in 2024.
We've already looked at Kamala Harris's bid for the Presidency in 2020 in the previous article in this series. The 2020 race featured a number of other impressive candidates who just happened to be female. Let's look back on some of their campaigns.
Tulsi Gabbard: Tulsi Gabbard hoped to be the first millenial as well as the first woman to be elected President of the United States. She was born on April 12, 1981, the first year of what many refer to as "Generation Y." She was the U.S. Representative for Hawaii's 2nd congressional district from 2013 to 2021. Following her election in 2012, she became the first Samoan American and the first Hindu member of the United States Congress. A member of the Democratic Party, but criticized for sometimes not towing the party line, she is also a veteran, having served in a field medical unit of the Hawaii Army National Guard in a combat zone in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 and she was deployed to Kuwait from 2008 to 2009. She previously served in the Hawaii House of Representatives from 2002 to 2004, elected at age 21, making Gabbard the youngest woman to be elected to a U.S. state legislature. Gabbard was a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee until February 28, 2016, when she resigned to endorse Senator Bernie Sanders for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. On January 11, 2019, Gabbard announced that she was seeking the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 2020. On March 19, 2020, she dropped out of the 2020 election and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden. Gabbard was the only candidate with primary delegates to not be invited to the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
Kirsten Gillebrand: Kirsten Elizabeth Gillibrand was appointed as the junior United States Senator from New York in 2009 after Hillary Clinton left the job to become Secretary of State. Gillibrand previously served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007 to 2009. On March 17, 2019, Gillibrand officially declared her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2020 election. Born on December 9, 1966 in Albany. Both of her parents were attorneys and she followed in the family footsteps, graduating from Dartmouth College and from the UCLA School of Law. After holding attorney positions in government and private practice, she worked on Hillary Clinton's 2000 U.S. Senate campaign. Gillibrand was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 2006, represented New York's 20th congressional district, a conservative district in upstate New York. She was re-elected in 2008. During her House tenure, Gillibrand was part of a group known as "Blue Dog Democrats". The group was known for voting against the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (commonly known as the bank bailout) and for supporting Medicare-for-all. After Senator Clinton's appointment as Secretary of State in 2009, Governor David Paterson selected Gillibrand to fill the Senate seat that had been vacated by Clinton. Gillibrand won a special election in 2010 to keep the seat, and was subsequently reelected to full terms in 2012 and 2018. In a Twitter post on March 17, Gillibrand announced that she was officially running for president. She suspended her campaign on August 28, 2019, citing her failure to qualify for the third round of Democratic primary debates.
Amy Klobuchar: On a cold Minnesota winter day on February 10, 2019, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar announced her candidacy to an outdoor audience at a campaign announcement rally at Boom Island Park in Minneapolis. Klobuchar was born in Plymouth, Minnesota, Klobuchar on May 25, 1960. She received her B.A. degree magna cum laude in political science in 1982 from Yale University, where she was a member of the improv troupe Suddenly Susan. During her time at Yale, Klobuchar spent time as an intern for then Vice President Walter Mondale. Klobuchar enrolled at the University of Chicago Law School, where she received her J. D. in 1985. After law school, Klobuchar worked as a corporate lawyer, as a prosecutor, and as a partner at the Minnesota law firms Dorsey & Whitney and Gray Plant Mooty, where she specialized in regulatory work in telecommunications law. Klobuchar was elected Hennepin County attorney in 1998, and reelected in 2002 unopposed. She was elected as the US Senator for Minnesota in 2006 with 58% of the vote, winning all but eight of Minnesota's 87 counties. She became the first woman to be elected U.S. Senator from Minnesota. (Muriel Humphrey was appointed to fill her husband's unexpired term and not elected.) Klobuchar was re-elected in 2012 with 65.2% of the vote, and again in 2018 by a 24-point margin. On January 19, 2020, The New York Times editorial board endorsed Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren for president. On March 2, 2020, the day before Super Tuesday, Klobuchar suspended her campaign and endorsed Joe Biden. She was one of several women asked to undergo vetting for consideration as his vice-presidential running mate. On June 18, Klobuchar withdrew herself from consideration, saying that Biden should choose a woman of color.
Marianne Williamson: One of these things is not like the others. Marianne Williamson was not an elected politician when she ran for the Democratic Party's nomination for President in 2020. She has never held elected office in Congress or as a Governor, though she did run for Congress unsuccessfully once. She is an American author, lecturer and activist, who has written 13 books, primarily in the field of wellness and spirituality. Four of her books have been New York Times number one bestsellers. She is the founder of Project Angel Food, a volunteer food delivery program that serves home-bound people with AIDS and other life-threatening illnesses. She is also the co-founder of The Peace Alliance, a nonprofit grassroots education and advocacy organization supporting peace-building projects. In 2014, Williamson unsuccessfully ran as an Independent to represent California's 33rd congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. On January 29, 2019, she announced her campaign to seek the Democratic nomination for the 2020 United States presidential election. She participated in the first primary debate in Iowa and spoke for less than five minutes, placing her 17th in speaking time of the 20 candidates. On January 2, 2020, after missing several fundraising targets, Williamson announced that she would have to continue her run without campaign staff. On January 10, Williamson announced the end of her campaign and pledged to support the Democratic nominee.
Elizabeth Warren: Elizabeth Warren has served as a United States Senator from Massachusetts since 2013, and was considered to be a rare combination, a "populist academic". Warren was formerly a prominent legal scholar specializing in bankruptcy law. As a legislator, she has become a progressive leader, with a focus on consumer protection, economic opportunity, and widening the social safety. She was born Elizabeth Ann Herring on June 22, 1949 in Oklahoma City. Warren graduated from the University of Houston with a Bachelor of Science degree in speech pathology in 1970 and from Rutgers Law School in 1976. She taught law at several universities, including the University of Houston, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University. Warren is the author of three books and coauthor of six others. Warren became known as a vocal opponent of what eventually became a 2005 act restricting bankruptcy access for individuals. Her profile rose due to her forceful stances in favor of more stringent banking regulations following the 2007–08 financial crisis. She served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel of the Troubled Asset Relief Program and was instrumental in the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for which she served as the first Special Advisor. Warren had once been a registered Republican, but later changed party affiliation. On November 6, 2012, she defeated Republican Senator Scott Brown with 53.7% of the vote. She became the first woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts, part of a sitting U.S. Senate that had 20 female senators in office, the largest female U.S. Senate delegation in history at the time, following the November 2012 elections. In December 2012 Warren was assigned a seat on the Senate Banking Committee, which oversees the implementation of Dodd–Frank and other regulation of the banking industry. On February 9, 2019, Warren officially announced her candidacy at a rally in Lawrence, Massachusetts, at the site of the 1912 Bread and Roses strike. In early June 2019, Warren placed second in some polls, with Joe Biden in first place and Bernie Sanders in third. In the following weeks her poll numbers steadily increased, and a September Iowa poll placed her in the lead with 22% to Biden's 20%. An October 24 Quinnipiac poll placed Warren in the lead at 28%, with Biden at 21% and Sanders at 15%. After a disappointing finish on Super Tuesday, including a third-place result in her home state of Massachusetts, she suspended her campaign on March 5, 2020. Political commentators have attributed her inability to win primary races to the primaries' focus on "electability" in a race against Donald Trump, her popularity peaking too early in the race, and her inability to position herself between progressive and more moderate voters.
Who will be the women who vie for the Presidency in 2024? Presuming that President Biden does not seek a second term in office, some of the names on the Democratic Party side who are speculated to be candidates include Vice-President Harris, Senators Klobuchar and Warren again, Progressive New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Pressley, Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. For the Republican Party, some of the names mentioned include former South Carolina Governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, controversial Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn.
Will 2024 be the year that the United States joins the rest of the world in electing its first female head of state? This question will add an extra dimension to political spectating two years from now.
We've already looked at Kamala Harris's bid for the Presidency in 2020 in the previous article in this series. The 2020 race featured a number of other impressive candidates who just happened to be female. Let's look back on some of their campaigns.
Tulsi Gabbard: Tulsi Gabbard hoped to be the first millenial as well as the first woman to be elected President of the United States. She was born on April 12, 1981, the first year of what many refer to as "Generation Y." She was the U.S. Representative for Hawaii's 2nd congressional district from 2013 to 2021. Following her election in 2012, she became the first Samoan American and the first Hindu member of the United States Congress. A member of the Democratic Party, but criticized for sometimes not towing the party line, she is also a veteran, having served in a field medical unit of the Hawaii Army National Guard in a combat zone in Iraq from 2004 to 2005 and she was deployed to Kuwait from 2008 to 2009. She previously served in the Hawaii House of Representatives from 2002 to 2004, elected at age 21, making Gabbard the youngest woman to be elected to a U.S. state legislature. Gabbard was a vice chair of the Democratic National Committee until February 28, 2016, when she resigned to endorse Senator Bernie Sanders for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination. On January 11, 2019, Gabbard announced that she was seeking the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in 2020. On March 19, 2020, she dropped out of the 2020 election and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden. Gabbard was the only candidate with primary delegates to not be invited to the 2020 Democratic National Convention.
Kirsten Gillebrand: Kirsten Elizabeth Gillibrand was appointed as the junior United States Senator from New York in 2009 after Hillary Clinton left the job to become Secretary of State. Gillibrand previously served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 2007 to 2009. On March 17, 2019, Gillibrand officially declared her candidacy for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States in the 2020 election. Born on December 9, 1966 in Albany. Both of her parents were attorneys and she followed in the family footsteps, graduating from Dartmouth College and from the UCLA School of Law. After holding attorney positions in government and private practice, she worked on Hillary Clinton's 2000 U.S. Senate campaign. Gillibrand was elected to the United States House of Representatives in 2006, represented New York's 20th congressional district, a conservative district in upstate New York. She was re-elected in 2008. During her House tenure, Gillibrand was part of a group known as "Blue Dog Democrats". The group was known for voting against the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (commonly known as the bank bailout) and for supporting Medicare-for-all. After Senator Clinton's appointment as Secretary of State in 2009, Governor David Paterson selected Gillibrand to fill the Senate seat that had been vacated by Clinton. Gillibrand won a special election in 2010 to keep the seat, and was subsequently reelected to full terms in 2012 and 2018. In a Twitter post on March 17, Gillibrand announced that she was officially running for president. She suspended her campaign on August 28, 2019, citing her failure to qualify for the third round of Democratic primary debates.
Amy Klobuchar: On a cold Minnesota winter day on February 10, 2019, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar announced her candidacy to an outdoor audience at a campaign announcement rally at Boom Island Park in Minneapolis. Klobuchar was born in Plymouth, Minnesota, Klobuchar on May 25, 1960. She received her B.A. degree magna cum laude in political science in 1982 from Yale University, where she was a member of the improv troupe Suddenly Susan. During her time at Yale, Klobuchar spent time as an intern for then Vice President Walter Mondale. Klobuchar enrolled at the University of Chicago Law School, where she received her J. D. in 1985. After law school, Klobuchar worked as a corporate lawyer, as a prosecutor, and as a partner at the Minnesota law firms Dorsey & Whitney and Gray Plant Mooty, where she specialized in regulatory work in telecommunications law. Klobuchar was elected Hennepin County attorney in 1998, and reelected in 2002 unopposed. She was elected as the US Senator for Minnesota in 2006 with 58% of the vote, winning all but eight of Minnesota's 87 counties. She became the first woman to be elected U.S. Senator from Minnesota. (Muriel Humphrey was appointed to fill her husband's unexpired term and not elected.) Klobuchar was re-elected in 2012 with 65.2% of the vote, and again in 2018 by a 24-point margin. On January 19, 2020, The New York Times editorial board endorsed Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren for president. On March 2, 2020, the day before Super Tuesday, Klobuchar suspended her campaign and endorsed Joe Biden. She was one of several women asked to undergo vetting for consideration as his vice-presidential running mate. On June 18, Klobuchar withdrew herself from consideration, saying that Biden should choose a woman of color.
Marianne Williamson: One of these things is not like the others. Marianne Williamson was not an elected politician when she ran for the Democratic Party's nomination for President in 2020. She has never held elected office in Congress or as a Governor, though she did run for Congress unsuccessfully once. She is an American author, lecturer and activist, who has written 13 books, primarily in the field of wellness and spirituality. Four of her books have been New York Times number one bestsellers. She is the founder of Project Angel Food, a volunteer food delivery program that serves home-bound people with AIDS and other life-threatening illnesses. She is also the co-founder of The Peace Alliance, a nonprofit grassroots education and advocacy organization supporting peace-building projects. In 2014, Williamson unsuccessfully ran as an Independent to represent California's 33rd congressional district in the United States House of Representatives. On January 29, 2019, she announced her campaign to seek the Democratic nomination for the 2020 United States presidential election. She participated in the first primary debate in Iowa and spoke for less than five minutes, placing her 17th in speaking time of the 20 candidates. On January 2, 2020, after missing several fundraising targets, Williamson announced that she would have to continue her run without campaign staff. On January 10, Williamson announced the end of her campaign and pledged to support the Democratic nominee.
Elizabeth Warren: Elizabeth Warren has served as a United States Senator from Massachusetts since 2013, and was considered to be a rare combination, a "populist academic". Warren was formerly a prominent legal scholar specializing in bankruptcy law. As a legislator, she has become a progressive leader, with a focus on consumer protection, economic opportunity, and widening the social safety. She was born Elizabeth Ann Herring on June 22, 1949 in Oklahoma City. Warren graduated from the University of Houston with a Bachelor of Science degree in speech pathology in 1970 and from Rutgers Law School in 1976. She taught law at several universities, including the University of Houston, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Pennsylvania, and Harvard University. Warren is the author of three books and coauthor of six others. Warren became known as a vocal opponent of what eventually became a 2005 act restricting bankruptcy access for individuals. Her profile rose due to her forceful stances in favor of more stringent banking regulations following the 2007–08 financial crisis. She served as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel of the Troubled Asset Relief Program and was instrumental in the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, for which she served as the first Special Advisor. Warren had once been a registered Republican, but later changed party affiliation. On November 6, 2012, she defeated Republican Senator Scott Brown with 53.7% of the vote. She became the first woman ever elected to the U.S. Senate from Massachusetts, part of a sitting U.S. Senate that had 20 female senators in office, the largest female U.S. Senate delegation in history at the time, following the November 2012 elections. In December 2012 Warren was assigned a seat on the Senate Banking Committee, which oversees the implementation of Dodd–Frank and other regulation of the banking industry. On February 9, 2019, Warren officially announced her candidacy at a rally in Lawrence, Massachusetts, at the site of the 1912 Bread and Roses strike. In early June 2019, Warren placed second in some polls, with Joe Biden in first place and Bernie Sanders in third. In the following weeks her poll numbers steadily increased, and a September Iowa poll placed her in the lead with 22% to Biden's 20%. An October 24 Quinnipiac poll placed Warren in the lead at 28%, with Biden at 21% and Sanders at 15%. After a disappointing finish on Super Tuesday, including a third-place result in her home state of Massachusetts, she suspended her campaign on March 5, 2020. Political commentators have attributed her inability to win primary races to the primaries' focus on "electability" in a race against Donald Trump, her popularity peaking too early in the race, and her inability to position herself between progressive and more moderate voters.
Who will be the women who vie for the Presidency in 2024? Presuming that President Biden does not seek a second term in office, some of the names on the Democratic Party side who are speculated to be candidates include Vice-President Harris, Senators Klobuchar and Warren again, Progressive New York Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Massachusetts Representative Ayanna Pressley, Arizona Senator Kyrsten Sinema, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. For the Republican Party, some of the names mentioned include former South Carolina Governor and UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, controversial Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn.
Will 2024 be the year that the United States joins the rest of the world in electing its first female head of state? This question will add an extra dimension to political spectating two years from now.