Wilson on Political Women

Last year, I ran for the Utah State Senate. I worked as hard as I knew how, and I thought I acquitted myself well. And at the Salt Lake County Convention, I came up short.

I lost by six votes.

Believe me, that’s no fun. For the next 24 hours or so, I wanted to crawl into a hole. I kept coming up with all the “coulda woulda shouldas” that would have gotten me those extra six votes. Then my wife and I left the kids with a sitter, took off to Park City for a night, and came back with a fresh perspective. My campaign was a great experience, and I learned things I could not have learned any other way than by putting my name on a ballot. But in the end, I lost. And life goes on. That’s just the way it is.

I thought about that my own experience today as I picked up the Deseret Morning News and read the front page headline:

“Loss bodes ill for women in politics, Wilson says.”

That makes it look like Jenny Wilson, who for a very long time was the front runner to replace the reprehensible Rocky Anderson as Salt Lake City’s mayor, blames sexism for her defeat at the polls three days ago. That’s certainly what I thought when I read the headline. So I was prepared to write a lengthy rant about how blaming sexism/racism/ any-ism for your defeat is increasing the whole victimization culture, and how great Margaret Thatcher was, and how Wilson lost fair and square, and while that sucks for her, she should stop whining and take it like a man, so to speak.

Except the article is more complicated than that. And Wilson actually raises an interesting point.

Some background: Rocky Anderson, who is, in my mind, the foulest elected official in the state of Utah, wrote an op-ed about how Wilson would have a hard time serving as mayor because she has small children at home, which would demand too much of her time and attention. Here’s what Wilson had to say about that:

"Rocky's charges and all of the discussions out there, I think, if anything, are going to suppress women from having an interest in running for office," Wilson said. "Now I feel like there will be some sense of, 'Oh great, I've got kids. Look what happened to Jenny.' And that's too bad."

Wilson, I think, has stumbled over an important idea while arriving at the wrong conclusion. In the first place, Rocky was trying to take down Wilson in order to secure a victory for his hand-picked successor, Keith Christensen, who came in a distant fourth behind Wilson, garnering roughly a third of Wilson’s vote total. So to say that Rocky’s op-ed shifted public opinion in any significant way is self-delusional on Wilson’s part.

Yet the question remains – could Rocky Anderson be right for the first time in his life?

Should we not consider the family commitments of a candidate running for office? Politics is a jealous mistress, no matter what your gender. When young children have to compete with the public for their parents’ attention, then something’s has to give. If it’s the public, then the elected official probably may not be giving the office the attention if it deserves. If it’s the child, then that says something about the public official’s character that could make her – or him – less attractive as a candidate.

Unlike Wilson, I don’t think this is just a female problem. Fred Thompson is running for president, and he has two very young children at home. They’re not going to be seeing very much of their father, both during the campaign and if he wins the presidency. Now Wilson would say that’s between Fred and his family, and its unfair to judge him based on something that personal. Except politics is inherently unfair. And voters make judgments on the whole person, and some would likely be turned off to learn that Thompson is more interested in being president than being a devoted father.

There’s some hypocrisy here on my part, too. When I ran for office, I had – and still have – five young children, with one still in diapers. I was confident that, had I won, I would have been able to juggle my time appropriately and still be a devoted father. Certainly Wilson believes she could have been both mayor and mother and done well on both counts. And maybe she could have. In her mind, the voters should have left that decision to her. But, in politics, the voters always have the last word.

I really don’t know how many votes she lost because folks thought she ought to be home with her kids instead of running city government. I think it’s fewer than she thinks. I also think that Rocky, who is single and has no young children at home and could therefore devote 100% of his time to screwing up Salt Lake City, is hardly the poster child for Excellence in Mayoralism.

Yet I think that a candidate’s family life will always be a factor in the voters’ minds. And, unlike Wilson, I don’t necessarily think it “bodes ill” for anything. It is what it is. And it’s certainly worth thinking about.

You still lost, though, Jenny. I know. It sucks. Take it like a man.