After Trump's election and #MeToo, nearly 100 women are running for Kentucky statehouse

Nearly 100 women are running for the Kentucky legislature this year, joining a national trend seen since the election of President Donald Trump and amid the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment and assault.

In all, 61 Democrats and 31 Republicans are running for seats in the General Assembly, according to Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes and officials for the state's two major parties. Only 22 of them are incumbents.

The number of female candidates seeking a legislative seat appears to be a record, she said. The number dwarfs the totals seen in 2014 and 2016, when fewer than 40 women filed to run for the statehouse during each campaign cycle, she noted.

"That’s quite a leap and bound," said Grimes, a Democrat who took office in January 2012. “I believe the work that we are seeing now of people stepping up and having the courage to serve exhibits exactly the energy we saw after the presidential election just continuing to grow.

"This is why I came to Frankfort," she added, saying she ran for a statewide office partly because she worried there otherwise might be no woman serving at that level in Kentucky.

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Since then, she has seen growth in the number of women pursuing public office. In addition to a huge increase in women running for the legislature this year, Grimes said a high number of current and former educators — nearly 40 (many of whom are women) — are running for Kentucky's House of Representatives and Senate.

“We are on par if not surpassing presidential election years" in terms of candidate filings overall, she said. "The energy and momentum across the board is overwhelming."

In Kentucky, only 21 women have ever served in the state Senate, and only 78 women have ever served in its House, according to the Legislative Research Commission. There are currently 18 women serving in the 100-member House and four women in the 38-member Senate.

Nationally, the Center for American Women and Politics is already seeing a surge in the number of women interested in competing in the upcoming election, information services coordinator Chelsea Hill said.

Most states haven't hit their filing deadlines for U.S. congressional candidates yet, she noted. But so far, 113 women have filed as candidates for the U.S. House of Representatives and another 318 women are likely to run, she said. In the U.S. Senate, five women have filed as candidates and another 45 have been identified as likely to run.

Republican and Democratic women already involved in Kentucky politics say they see a rising interest in public service at both the local and state level among women.

"In every segment of our society, I think women have finally had enough," said state Sen. Julie Raque Adams, R-Louisville. "I think if you look at the frustration with our national politics, you look at the frustration with our entertainment industry ... even just corporate America, I mean, it's about time that the paradigm shifts."

The 2016 presidential election — which ended in November 2016 when President Donald Trump defeated Democrat Hillary Clinton, the first female nominee of any major U.S. political party — spurred many Americans to take a greater interest in political activism.

His election sparked the Women’s March in January 2017, a massive, worldwide demonstration in which hundreds of thousands of people turned out to denounce statements Trump has made about women as well as his stances on matters like immigration. The march also advocated for issues such as worker’s rights and civil rights.

And it fueled discussions about the need for more women in public office and other positions of power.

Those conversations have only intensified with the #MeToo movement — which grew rapidly last fall after news organizations exposed numerous sexual misconduct allegations against Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein and others — encouraging more and more women to speak up about their experiences with sexual harassment and assault.

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Adams hopes to encourage more conservative women to run for the legislature through Kentucky Strong, an organization founded during the 2016 election cycle that recruits, trains and assists pro-business Republican women interested in public office.

"They say that you have to ask a woman three times to run for office before she'll even consider it," Adams said. "And so I thought, 'I want to be that person that tries to cultivate that woman to share her knowledge and share her skills in this realm.' "

Ashley Bruggeman, a Republican first-time candidate from Lexington competing for the House's 88th District, said every person must earn her or his seat, but it's great to see women feel more emboldened to take on these leadership roles.

“As there’s this push to fill boardrooms with women and chief executive positions within corporations (with women), then it only makes sense that it would trickle over into politics as well," said Bruggeman, who works in the construction industry. “It would be incredible to be able to work with a large number of other women in the legislature."

Nancy Tate, a Republican who lives near Brandenburg and is running for the House's 27th District, also sees this as a natural transition. When she started working in management for UPS 30 years ago, she said it wasn't unusual for her to be the sole woman in the conference room.

But Tate isn't the only one there anymore, and she said it's time for women to be closely involved in government, too.

"We're all concerned about the budget, we’re all concerned about the pensions, we’re all concerned about the educational opportunities for our children," she said. "Here in Kentucky, we have an awesome opportunity to add leadership capability.”

Like Tate and Bruggeman, Charlotte Goddard, a teacher and Democrat from Hickory, is also campaigning for office for the first time. 

Goddard, who is pursuing the House's 2nd District seat, said the #MeToo movement and the 2016 election played a role in her decision to run.

So did her belief that it is critical for educators' voices to be heard in state government, which controls the future of the troubled public pension system for teachers and shapes numerous policies that impact students and schools across the commonwealth.

"Education is very important. It's foundational," Goddard said. "We have got to have an educated society."

Besides her legislative campaign, Goddard is also part of the 2018 training class for Emerge Kentucky, an organization that has recruited nearly 200 Democratic women to run for public office since 2009.

"The level of enthusiasm and interest has absolutely grown with the culmination of the 2016 election and the #MeToo movement," Emerge Kentucky Board Chair Jennifer Moore said, noting that giving women their voice is what both #MeToo and Emerge aim to do.

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Many high-profile men around the country have been publicly accused of sexual misconduct since the #MeToo movement began late last year.

In Kentucky, state Rep. Jeff Hoover, R-Jamestown, eventually resigned as House speaker after Courier Journal revealed he secretly settled a sexual harassment claim with a woman on his legislative staff. (Hoover has admitted to sending inappropriate text messages but denied harassing anyone.)

Moore said the concerns about harassment in Frankfort underscore the importance of having more women leading in the legislature on a variety of issues.

“We need to change the culture in Frankfort, and one of the ways to do that is you bring more women to the table," she said. “There’s that old saying that if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu, and women have been on the menu for too long in Kentucky."

State Rep. Attica Scott, a Democrat from Louisville who was part of Emerge Kentucky's first training class, said the program has especially helped women of color gain the skills they need to run for office. (Emerge reserves at least a quarter of the spots in its training class for women of color every year.)

"There have always been women of color who wanted to run for office but didn't feel like they had that support," Scott said.

Scott said several Democratic women of color are running in the legislative primary in May, which is "huge."

"For me, that's significant, and that's something we should lift up and acknowledge as a win for our party and its progressive ticket," she said.

Scott credits the network of women Emerge Kentucky has developed as being a key resource for her and other candidates. She said she can call on her Emerge sisters — and they can call on her — to support each other in myriad ways.

"That makes a difference to know that you have that base of support all across the commonwealth," she said. "Women who are saying, 'You belong in office, and we are going to do what we can to get you there.' "

Republican Metro Councilwoman Angela Leet, who is running for mayor of Louisville, said more and more women are realizing the value they bring to policymaking conversations and showing others how to get involved, too.

When she graduated college years ago, Leet said she refused to believe the so-called glass ceiling that impedes women’s professional advancement was real.

“But sadly, there is a glass ceiling, and I think the beauty of more women coming together is we lift each other up,” she said. “Women are grasping each other’s hands and saying, 'We can do this together.' ”

Morgan Watkins: 502-582-4502; mwatkins@courierjournal.com; Twitter: @morganwatkins26. Support strong local journalism by subscribing today: www.courier-journal.com/morganw.

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