The swing state of Iowa is the starting line for all presidential hopefuls, as it’s the first state caucus in the nation.
Just last week Hillary Clinton, the only Democratic presidential candidate, visited Iowa following her video announcement on Twitter that she is running for president. Now, former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina, likely to be the only female GOP presidential candidate, is visiting the purple state.
Cyndi Lauper’s Girls Just Want To Have Fun blared from the speakers Wednesday afternoon as Carly Fiorina entered to speak with female attendees at the Iowa Women Lead Change conference in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.
“Maybe just maybe, we will have two women running for president in 2016 and wouldn’t that be a great thing,” Fiorina touted to the hundreds of women who cheered her entrance.
Both Fiorina and Clinton understand how important the female vote is for the 2016 election, since women make up more than 50 percent of the population, and “women make up more than half of Iowa’s population and outnumber men in 90 of Iowa’s 99 counties,” according to ICSW.
Vanessa McDonald, an IWLC attendee and mother of four from Coralville, Iowa, told Breitbart News she would like to see a female president in 2016.
“Ideally, we definitely need to move the pendulum – I think it is necessary that it’s a woman,” McDonald said. “I just know that women engage with individuals on a higher level than men do – and we have a higher empathy that I think would obviously help me vote for a female.”
McDonald said she is tired of the war on women mantra that drives the equal pay argument. “I’m so sick of hearing about it for years and years and years and it’s still not equal yet – we need someone in office to get that all figured out.”
When asked if Clinton would be one to figure out equal pay, McDonald said, “her words and actions don’t align – that’s troublesome.”
As an Iowa voter, McDonald said the underlying issue most people care about is the debt. “I feel as a mom with four young kids our debt is the biggest concern – and the amount of money that my children owe the government before they were born.”
Diane Ramsey, the CEO of Iowa Women Lead Change, a non-partisan organization that focuses on inspiring and challenging women to become leaders, said, “I believe that women are like – women are like all voters – that they want to know that their elected officials are truly concerned in the best interest of their constituents.”
Secondly, Ramsey added that the politicians must be honest and ethical and that there are many issues that are truly issues for everyone that have been relegated as women issues and they aren’t – they are human issues.”
Ramsey stressed the country needs someone – male or female, Democrat or Republican, to look at creating a better tomorrow for all of Americans.
She said, “Women are a bit different in that we are probably less partisan and more open to saying lets start rolling up our shirt sleeves” in order to get some answers and see progress.