Sexism and Congress

There is a discourse around the campaign for the U.S. House seat from Vermont that is troubling and needs to be discussed. 

It’s a discussion mostly happening in private spaces. But this week it reared up in a political cartoon, on the VTDigger website and then in a blunt blog post.

As anyone paying attention knows, Senator Patrick Leahy is retiring and Vermont’s lone congressman, Peter Welch, is running to replace him. Welch’s campaign leaves his seat in the U.S. House vacant and three women, all Democrats, have announced they are running. 

These candidates are state senators Becca Balint, D-Windham, Kesha Ram-Hinsdale, D-Chittenden and sitting Lt. Gov. Molly Gray. The race will be hard-fought, competitive, and very good for Democracy. The winner will deserve the seat. 

The first issue around this campaign came via a comic by venerable cartoonist Tim Newcomb, depicting the candidates in a car driven by their mentor, former Vermont Gov. Madeleine Kunin. Gray is in a car seat, Ram-Hinsdale is in a booster seat. Balint is in the front with Kunin. Gray and Ram-Hinsdale are depicted as whining babies, Balint as a serious policy-driven senator who, with Kunin, can’t wait to get rid of these two kids.

That the cartoon is overtly sexist is a given. Gray is the superficial candidate with a cute smile and the right gender. Ram-Hinsdale is the same but with darker skin. Balint is drawn as the serious legislator and Kunin as the impatient parent. 

The executive director of Emerge Vermont, Elaine Haney, explains her feelings about the cartoon in a well written post last week. She points out that all cartoonists, like comedians, get a pass on these issues. Their job is to poke fun and reveal us, especially when we get too serious. And no doubt Tim would reply that he has drawn countless cartoons lampooning Leahy, Welch and other male politicians for decades. And he would be right. 

But Haney can’t give him the pass. She writes about it better than I can, which to its credit, VTDigger published. It is worth a read here:

https://vtdigger.org/2022/01/24/elaine-haney-infantilizing-women-i-cant-unsee-this-cartoon/

Haney says that she cannot…

“unsee the infantilizing of two of the most successful women in politics today … The things that are apparently supposed to be funny about this cartoon are actually entrenched stereotypes and tropes that reinforce implicit bias against women and people of color,’’

Beyond the cartoon, there is a disturbing conversation going on about Gray that is harder to put your finger on. I hear it in casual conversations and in emails. The criticism has even made its way onto some blogs. Mainstream reporters don’t write about it. But they talk about it. 

The sentiment is reflected in a letter to VTDigger last week that says Gray doesn’t deserve the office because of her relationship to the Leahy political machine, the fact she grew up on a farm and that, of course, she’s too good looking. You get the picture. 

There’s more. Some people whisper that Gray is too ambitious; that she should wait her turn and serve at a lower level of the political system.  

These whispers echo Hillary Clinton’s problem. 

Countless books have been written about the “Hillary Clinton problem”; that people just didn’t like her. Her clothes, her looks, her husband.  

But the real issue many people had with Hillary Clinton was that she was a woman. Lots of people resented a woman running for an office, they thought, should be reserved for a man. They won’t say it out loud about Molly Gray, but many are thinking the same thing. 

But that didn’t stop her from running an excellent campaign for Lt. Governor, easily beating a talented state senator along the way. She took slings and arrows, tough media criticism and never blinked. 

Ambitious? Of course! Show me a politician without ambition and I’ll show you a losing politician. Barack Obama ran for president during his first term in the US Senate with no record. Patrick Leahy ran for the U.S. Senate at age 34. 

Elaine Haney is far better placed than me to explore these issues. But we need to talk about them out in the open, not behind closed doors. These women will run serious campaigns about serious issues. The stakes are high. We have to dismantle the built-in sexism that infects us all. And then maybe we can move on to what Gray, Balint and Ram-Hinsdale might do to save our Democracy.