Black
women are among the most politically
underrepresented Americans. They are 7.7
percent of the total US population and 15.3
percent of
the population of women, yet they are only
5.4 percent of
all voting members of Congress, 5.2 percent of
all state legislators, and only 3.5 percent of
all statewide elective executives, according
to the Center for American Women and Politics
at Rutgers University. No Black woman has
served — ever — as governor of a state, and
currently 8 percent of all mayors in the 100
most populous cities are Black women.
Black
women are like the proverbial canary in the
mine shaft. Coal miners would carry the
canaries down into the tunnels with them so if
dangerous gases such as carbon monoxide
amassed in the mine, the gases would sicken
the canary before killing the miners, thus
providing a warning to exit the tunnels
immediately. Like the canaries, Black women
are an early indicator of potential danger
with our representative democracy. If the most
vulnerable of us can’t be included at the
table, then none of us are safe.
A
new report from the nonpartisan
RepresentWomen, called “Breaking
Barriers for Black Woman Candidates,”
helps us understand why Black women have been
so politically underrepresented, and what the
US can do to rectify that historical wound.
It’s much more complex than simply shouting
“racism,” though that is certainly a
significant cultural factor. It’s also about
the specific rules of elections — the very
foundation of our representative democracy —
that are distorting the deserved
representation of Black women, as well as of
other racial demographics.
To
set the tone for what’s at stake -- namely the
much espoused but rarely practiced democratic
homily of “representation for all” -- the
paper opens with a personal testimony from
Victoria Pelletier, the second African
American city councilor ever elected in
Portland, ME. Ms. Pelletier calls her election
“one of the greatest achievements of my life,
and on the other hand, it’s one of the most
mentally and emotionally challenging
experiences I’ve ever had.” During her tenure,
she says, “there have been death threats and
hate mail sent to my personal address. I’ve
had my photo and personal information put on a
website specifically for threats of violence.
I’ve had photos of my family posted on a
website specifically for threats of violence.
I’ve endured a multitude of racial slurs being
shouted during public comment.”
Why
Midterms Matter for Black Girls and Young
Women?
The report explores
several key factors
inherent to the
systemic barriers Black
women candidates
face: the inadequacy
of candidate
recruitment by the political
parties, the
insidiousness of racially
inequitable campaign
funding, and the
toxic impact of the
winner-take-all
electoral system in
negatively shaping
the political
landscape, which denies
Black women the
sufficient opportunities
needed to run
successful campaigns.
The
report makes a strong case that “the U.S.
political system has built its foundations on
white patriarchy, which inherently fails to
account for the challenges faced by Black
women who want to participate in politics.
Although a record-breaking number of Black
women ran and won in recent elections, they
remain underrepresented at all levels of
government, showing a need to understand the
specific barriers that they face.”
Candidate
Recruitment
Recruitment
of Black women by political parties is crucial
because party endorsements confer tremendous
advantages on the candidates who receive their
support. Parties recruit and select candidates
based on factors like party loyalty,
popularity, and preparedness. And based on the
low number of Black women who are actually
nominated by parties, clearly also by race and
gender.
The
Republican Party, for example, rarely recruits
Black women as candidates. RepresentWomen
speculates that this may be because the
majority of women who support the GOP are
non-Black. In 2022, there were 136 Republican
women nominees seeking federal and state
office, but only 10 were Black women.
The
Democratic Party has a better track record of
nominating diverse candidates, but it has
still routinely supported white men and women
over Black female candidates. Look at the
current U.S. Senate race in California, where
the Democratic Party establishment has passed
up a great opportunity to make up for this
historical imbalance by supporting a stellar
Black woman, Congresswoman Barbara Lee.
Instead, Democratic Party traditionalists have
mostly rallied
behind Congressman
Adam Schiff. If elected, Congresswoman Lee
would be only the third Black woman elected to
serve as a U.S. Senator in the ancient, flawed
history of the American nation.
That
wasn’t the only time in recent memory that the
Democrats chose the white guy over the Black
woman. The report takes a closer look at
Maryland’s 2015 Senate race, in which
Democratic Party leaders endorsed Rep. Chris
Van Hollen over African-American Rep. Donna
Edwards, despite their almost identical voting
records and support from progressive groups.
The report says that the Van Hollen campaign
ran offensive ads depicting Edwards as an
angry Black woman and questioning her
integrity. Edwards faced a barrage
of personal attacks on
her character and personality. Edwards says
she was accused of playing "identity
politics" by
the allegedly big-tent Democrats because she
talked about the need for the perspectives of
people of color, women, and especially Black
women to have a home in the United States
Senate. Edwards says that a leading Democrat
argued that the US needs "strong
white men to
carry the flag for people of color." WTF!
To
fill the gap left by the stuck-in-the-mud
political parties, PACs and political
organizations have stepped up to endorse
Democratic candidates. Organizations such as
Emily’s List and Justice Democrats have
endorsed promising Black women. But an even
more effective potential solution would be
gender- and race-balanced recruitment targets.
Groups like RepresentWomen.org have
recommended that parties address the biases in
candidate selection processes by introducing
such recruitment targets and quotas. Parties
could also do a much better job acting as
connectors by creating opportunities for Black
women candidates to network with influential
donors, recruit volunteers, and promote their
campaigns.
Back
in 2017, a number of Black women leaders
wrote an
open letter to
then-Democratic National Committee (DNC) Chair
Tom Perez, bringing the party’s neglect of
Black women into the spotlight and requesting
a meeting to get the party to invest more
actively in Black women as political
leaders. Strategist
Donna Brazile and
political entities like the Maryland Black
Caucus Foundation have similarly highlighted
the need to recruit more Black women to run
for elected office. Early investment by
parties is critical to building a strong
pipeline of viable Black women candidates. By
recruiting Black women to run for entry-level
county and precinct positions, parties would
create opportunities for Black women to run
for higher levels of office with party
support.
Candidate
organizations such as The Black Women’s
Roundtable, Emerge, EMILY’s List, Higher
Heights for America PAC, and IGNITE have
created a blueprint for the actions that
parties can take to level the playing field
for Black women candidates. Initiatives that
allow them and the electeds to connect, such
as mentorship programs and networking forums,
and setting candidate recruitment targets and
quotas, provide support systems for Black
women that span beyond one election cycle. The
report makes a compelling case that uplifting
Black women in the political sphere will
strengthen parties, allowing them to expand
their base and create policy platforms derived
from actual lived rather than assumed
experiences
Campaign
Funding Inequities = Racially Inequitable
Funding
US
elections have long suffered from campaign
funding inequities that make it difficult for
underfunded candidates to gain a foothold. But
Black woman face an even starker cliff than
most.
Black
women rely more on small-dollar donations than
their white counterparts. In 2023, Angela
Alsobrooks raised more money from individual
donations than her opponent, David Trone, in
Maryland’s U.S. Senate Democratic primary.
Trone, who reported earning an annual salary
of up to $14 million, pulled 98 percent of the
$10 million he raised from his personal
accounts. Most Black women cannot match the
fat wallets of wealthy candidates like Trone,
and so must have access to equitable funding.
Lacking
the personal financial wealth, Black woman
therefore have to depend more heavily on
political small donors, party funding and
PACs. Yet those donation sources generally
fund Black women’s campaigns less
than those of
white women or white men.
In
competitive primary and general elections,
Black Democratic women challengers receive
significantly less money from large individual
donors than any other group of candidates. And
Black Democratic women receive much less money
than other candidates from early donors,
educators and retirees — which are the groups
and industries that power Democratic
campaigns. White men running for office
consistently dominate in fundraising.
This
is hardly surprising given historical
prejudice, whether conscious or unconscious.
What’s more surprising is how little has been
done to counteract these disadvantages for
Black female candidates and to level the
playing field.
Here
are some obvious solutions.
Donors
and PACs must actively commit to allocating
funds to Black women’s campaigns. National
parties should incentivize state and local
parties to fund more Black women candidates.
Gender-balanced funding initiatives are not
uncommon and are already used across
industries, such as the African Women Impact
Fund or chapters of the Black sorority Delta
Sigma Theta, which helps Black women fundraise
through soliciting donations from alumni
networks. All of these efforts help to build a
funding pipeline for Black women candidates.
But
that still relies on private sources of
campaign funding, and given that Black women
have the lowest per capita income, and the
black community in general has low income
levels, the real breakout solution is public
financing of campaigns. Programs in which
small-dollar donations are matched by tax
dollars exist in a range of cities (though not
much at state and federal levels). Cities like
New York, Los Angeles, Denver and San
Francisco provide public matching funds of
eight or nine dollars for every private dollar
raised by a candidate. These programs do the
most to allow non-traditional candidates to
run competitive campaigns. Such public
financing of campaigns incentivizes candidates
to rely on everyday voters rather than big
money and special interest groups.
Winner-Take-All
= All Don’t Win
Another
fundamental barrier to Black women’s political
success is the winner-take-all electoral
system, in which we elect representatives one
seat at a time. When voters have a single vote
to elect a single representative, research has
demonstrated that many voters are reluctant to
cast that vote for someone they perceive as
different or unelectable – such as a Black
woman.
Part
of the “winner take all” dynamic is the common
defect known as “vote splitting.” In a
multi-candidate field, candidates from the
same political constituency — such as several
Black women candidates or a Black male and a
Black female candidate — can end up spoiling
each other’s candidacy. Black women have
frequently reported being told to wait their
turn by party leaders who are worried about
candidates they consider to be less
competitive spoiling the election for their
chosen candidates.
In
Maryland, Glenarden mayor Cashenna Cross says,
"Black women [candidates] have developed a
‘hospitality mentality’ because we have been
told to wait our turn for so long. They think
we have got to wait for somebody to invite us
to the table.” Cross is mayor of a city where
all seven
seats on the city council are
held by African-Americans, with four of them
being Black women.
The RepresentWomen
report highlights
two solutions to the toxicities of the
winner-take-all method used in most elections
across the country – ranked choice voting and
proportional representation.
Implementing
ranked choice voting (RCV) would mitigate
these issues somewhat by allowing more
candidates to run and more non-traditional
candidates to win without spoiling each other.
Under RCV, voters rank candidates based on
preference, meaning that multiple Black women
can be on the same ballot without
splitting the vote.
Across
the US about 60 jurisdictions use RCV,
including San Francisco which elected London
Breed as its first Black woman mayor in 2018.
The RepresentWomen report found that
transforming America’s antiquated,
winner-take-all electoral system is a critical
step in creating more opportunities for Black
women to run and win.
Berkeley,
Oakland, San Francisco, and San Leandro CA all
adopted RCV in the early 2000s, with Albany
following their lead a number of years later.
In Oakland, Black voters have been more likely
to rank candidates than white voters, showing
positive engagement with RCV. New York City
held its first RCV elections in 2021,
resulting in an astounding result – the most
diverse city council ever, including a woman
of color majority with
10 Black women, four Afro-Latinas, and a Black
woman Speaker. RepresentWomen evaluated the
impact of NYC’s first woman of color majority
council in its Impact
Analysis of NYC's Woman Majority Council.
Several
viable strategies can be implemented to
address the gender and race-based barriers
that impact Black women’s ability to run for
office and win elections. RepresentWomen’s
research shows that both candidate-level
and systems-level solutions are required to
increase women’s political participation at
all levels of government.
Proportional
Representation: The Pot of Gold in the Mine
Shaft
The
most powerful reform of all would be
proportional ranked choice voting (PRCV),
which is a multi-winner electoral system that
permits voters to rank candidates by
preference. PRCV is advantageous to Black
women candidates because this multi-winner
system lowers the “victory threshold” – the
percentage of votes needed to win a seat – and
that in turn provides more opportunities for
Black women to get elected.
The
use of PRCV in Cambridge MA and Albany CA has
resulted in more diverse city councils. PRCV
has yielded representative outcomes in cities
like Arden, DE and Minneapolis, MN. Starting
this November, Portland Oregon will also use
PRCV to elect its city council, after a
successful campaign that was led by
communities of color to pass it via a
voter-approved ballot measure.
To
increase the number of Black women in local
offices, cities with high Black populations
should be the primary targets of electoral
reformers looking to implement PRCV. As voting
rights expert Lani
Guinier once
asserted, “51 percent of the people should not
get 100 percent of the power.”
The RW
report finds
that, for Black women to run and have a chance
of winning, it is necessary to dismantle both
the candidate-level and systems-level
obstacles they currently face. Political
parties play key roles in candidate
recruitment and should invest early and often
in Black women. PACs, donors, and public
financing programs can decrease the impact of
large-dollar donations and put power back in
the hands of voters. RCV and PRCV should be
implemented to create fairer elections and
more representative outcomes.
The
report concludes with a stirring call to
arms:
“A
representative government fosters trust
between voters and elected officials. Having
more Black women elected increases the
likelihood that challenges faced by Black
communities are addressed by representatives
who can relate to their lived experiences and
have a vested interest in implementing
effective policy solutions. For Black women,
seeing themselves in government combats
misogynoir and reinforces the fact that they
are capable and worthy decision-makers.”
Election
reformers can tinker around the edges and hope
for the best. Or they can learn the lessons
from the broken past: Change the rules, and
you change the results.
RepresentWomen’s excellent
report does
a great service by identifying which rules
need to change to empower the canaries in the
mine shaft and bring them into the light of
fresh air.
