EDITORIAL: John Conyers, Bob Dascola and Those Really Challenged When Running for Elected Office

25-TERM CONGRESSMAN John Conyers and would-be Ann Arbor City Council candidate Bob Dascola have a lot in common at the moment. Both men are fighting to have their respective names appear on the August 5 Democratic primary ballot. Dascola is battling Charter requirements which his lawyer argues were rendered null and void decades ago. Rep. Conyers’s campaign was found to have used signature collectors who were not registered voters. Conyers, with the help of the ACLU, is challenging the law that requires candidate petition signature collectors to be registered voters. Both men are embroiled in potentially precedent-setting legal battles.

While Rep. Conyers and Mr. Dascola face daunting odds, in several important aspects the travails of both men pale in comparison to the challenges that face women who run for office. America ranks ninety-eighth in the world for percentage of women in Congress. That’s down from 59th in 1998. That standing puts our country just behind Kenya and Indonesia, and slightly ahead of the United Arab Emirates. Only five governors are women, including just one Democrat, and twenty-four states have never had a female governor. The percentage of women holding statewide and state legislative offices is less than 25 percent, barely higher than in 1993. In Michigan, only five of our 1,800 cities have female mayors.

In its 190 years, Ann Arbor has had only two female mayors, one a Democrat and one a Republican.

Legislatively, it makes a tremendous difference when women have a say in government. Multiple studies have also shown that the presence of more women in legislatures makes a significant difference in terms of the policy that gets passed. In Patterns of Democracy, former American Political Science Association president Arend Lijphart found that when there are more women legislators chambers produce more progressive policy on issues such as the environment, macroeconomic management, comprehensive support for families and individuals, violence prevention, and incarceration.

While the plight of Mr. Conyers’s efforts prompts a national media frenzy, and Mr. Dascola’s battle provides fodder for locals interested in city politics and the law, in reality the more pressing question is whether Ann Arbor voters will elect one of two woman running for the office to serve as mayor. Answering the question of how more citizens, in general, can be encouraged to run for elected office, is important locally and nationally. However, it’s more important to acknowledge the profound gender gap that exists in our state among those who lead its 1,800 cities.

Women of color face even more profound challenges. In the U.S., they constitute just 5.1 percent of the total 7,383 state legislators. There has never been a black, female governor of any state in the union and only three black women have ever served as lieutenant governors. Democrat Virg Bernero, who ran against Gov. Snyder in 2010, chose Southfield mayor Brenda Lawrence as his running-mate. Mayor Lawrence would have been only the fourth black woman in the U.S. to have held that elected position.

We are encouraged by the number of candidates running for local elected office this year and by the fact that two women are running for mayor. We urge voters to listen to these candidates with open minds and judge all locals running for office on their performances and voting records.