Report: Increasing Number of Republican Women Run for House in Midterms

In the current midterm election cycle, more Republican women have announced a prospective run for House seats across the country, according to reports.

Wall Street Journal reported that moves like this fuel the confidence in the party’s plans to send a large number of women to the House, building off their successes in the 2020 election cycle. Despite the current pace of Republican women stepping up to run in the House, Democrats have had more female Members of Congress for years.

In the last election, Republican women were among some of the most anticipated candidates to watch across the nation. Most notably, of the 14 Republican wins over the Democrats on election night, 11 of them were women. That grew the number of Republican women in the House to 31, the highest it’s ever been. The previous congress had only 13 Republican women.

So far, the midterm election has drawn 127 women who have signaled they plan to run for a House seat, according to the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC). They noted in the 2020 election there were only 50 women who had indicated a potential run by this point. The NRCC Communications Director Michael McAdams said, “The success of Republican women last year is one reason that a large field looks to be shaping up.”

One major accomplishment from the 2020 election was providing gender diversity to the House Republican Conference that some members said was much-needed. WSJ reported, “The 2018 midterms cut the number of GOP women to 13 from 23.” The report also noted that Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), now House Republican Conference chair, after the election wrote, “We are at a crisis level of GOP women in Congress.”

The report alluded that in 2020, a “record 227 Republican women sought House nominations,” which was up from 120 in 2018, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. “Far more Democratic women sought House seats—356—but that number was flat from 2018.”

In the current 117th Congress, there are 88 Democrat women and only 31 Republican women.

Helen Kalla, a spokeswoman from the Democrat Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC), said, “We welcome House Republicans to the year of our Lord 2021 as they begin recruiting more women candidates.”