With Renewed Focus On State Powers, More Women Are Running For Governor

The number of female governors may finally hit double digits after the upcoming midterm elections.

Currently, nine women hold the office — six Democrats and three Republicans. And an influx of women running for governor could push that number up considerably. Of the 36 states with gubernatorial races this year, 20 have women on the ballot, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. Since 1925, just 45 women have served as governor of a state.

These women are positioning themselves as the best leaders to make decisions about fundamental issues.

“It’s one of the most powerful political positions in the country, and that is especially true when we are talking about key policy debates,” said Kelly Dittmar, research director at CAWP, citing abortion rights and education as two primary examples.

“Governors play critical roles in these policy debates, so having more women in these positions has serious implications,” Dittmar said.

For those keeping score, Oregon’s Kate Brown is the only woman incumbent governor on her way out. Brown, a Democrat, first assumed office in 2015 after the resignation of John Kitzhaber. Now, due to term limits, the statehouse is open. With three women at the top of the ballot — the Democratic candidate Tina Kotek, the Republican Christine Drazan, and the independent Betsy Johnson — Oregon will almost certainly be choosing another woman for the job.

Alabama, Arizona, Iowa and Michigan are likewise all but assured to elect a woman governor, with the nominees for both leading parties being women. This marks a major pickup of all-woman gubernatorial races as, prior to 2022, the U.S. had only ever had four such contests: three in 2020, one in 2002, and the first in 1986.

With women running from both major parties, the candidate field is a diverse one, with the potential to break quite a few glass ceilings: potentially the country’s first openly lesbian governor, the first Black female governor, Arkansas’ first female governor, Massachusetts’ first female governor and several states that might have women serving as both governor and lieutenant governor for the first time.

Many of these candidates are leaning into their identities on the campaign trail as an electoral asset.

In an interview with NPR earlier this month, Stacey Abrams spoke to her readiness for the job in large part because of her lived experience as a Black woman in the South.

“In Georgia, the governor is an extraordinarily powerful job,” says Abrams. “Stand Your Ground was signed by a governor, not by a president. The evisceration of the social safety net started with a governor, not the White House, not with Congress. Jim Crow started and was the product of Southern governors. And so having a governor from the South whose grandfather — my mother's father — was born 25 years after the end of slavery? I carry with me a legacy and a vantage point that says I'm going to work harder than anyone ever has to live up to the legacy and the opportunities I have been granted.”

The Massachusetts gubernatorial candidate Maura Healey, who served as the first openly gay attorney general in the country, also positions her own identity as a credibility factor for deciding on LGBTQ+ policies at a time when transgender rights and marriage equality are flashpoints. Healey’s platform is clearly centered on LGBTQ+ rights, and she is “running to be the first lesbian governor in the country at a time when politicians across the country are launching heartless attacks on LGBTQ+ youth,” according to her campaign website.

In Arkansas, the former White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders regularly speaks about her experience as a working mother, and in an early campaign ad, put her motherhood front and center. In the video, Sanders touts her regular need to say “no” to her children as “the perfect training” for the job of governor, stating that “as governor, I will say no to Biden and the radical left’s agenda, but yes to good schools, lower taxes and higher-paying jobs.”

Dittmar said that watching the different ways in which these women are running–the playbooks they use, the issues they are running on and how they position their own identities — indicates progress, and serves as a confirmation that in today’s political landscape, “there’s no singular way to run as a woman.”

With dozens of women on gubernatorial ballots across the country, America will soon glean more insight into what it takes to win as a woman.