The triple crown

This year, Washington women are poised to take the triple crown — the governorship and both U.S. Senate seats. It's a first for Washington and the nation.

With all due respect to the men who founded the state and all those who have led us for the past 115 years, it's time for women to run Washington.

Though our state leads the nation in women's political leadership, only 11 women have ever been elected to a statewide office and only one in three state legislators is a woman. Fun facts to throw around at cocktail parties, but women leaders aren't just a novelty. Research shows that in both style and substance, women leaders offer us something men don't.

Susan Carroll, editor of "The Impact of Women in Political Office," writes, "So long as women were mere tokens struggling for survival in institutions unaccustomed to their presence, it seemed unlikely that women public officials would or could have much of a distinctive, gender-related impact.

"In recent years, however, women's numbers have increased to the point where women public officials do have a gender-related impact on public policy and the political process."

Carroll argues that "the clearest and most consistent" policy differences pertain to women, children and families.

Choice is almost always at the top of that list. Perhaps that's a key reason women have been so overwhelmingly successful in Washington state politics in recent years. Washington is widely considered a pro-choice state where even Republican women, like soon-to-retire Rep. Jennifer Dunn, call themselves pro-choice.

Four years ago I toured the state Capitol with a bunch of 4-Her's. From the gallery above the floor of the state Senate, our guide, an elderly man, proudly told us Washington has led the nation in number of women legislators since 1993. "The women," he said, "they mostly focus on women's issues."

I braced for the worst.

"The women," he went on, "they mostly work on education, transportation, jobs and health care. The men, they do other stuff."

As we walked down the hall, I wondered how much "other stuff" was left for the male two-thirds of the Legislature after the women have handled the four issues voters care about most consistently.

The man was right. In Washington, women take leadership on all sorts of issues not traditionally associated with the feminine domain. Sen. Patty Murray is the ranking Democrat on the Transportation Appropriations Committee and the first woman to serve on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

These days, Murray is as well-known for her work on port security as she is for health care and education legislation.

Sen. Maria Cantwell oversees energy and natural resources, Indian affairs and small-business policy. In the Legislature, she wrote the Growth Management Act, one of the most influential pieces of state legislation in her tenure.

Attorney General Christine Gregoire, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, is no policy lightweight either.

Well-known for negotiating a $206 billion settlement with the major tobacco companies on behalf of all 50 states, Gregoire also led the charge to hold the federal government responsible for the cleanup of the Hanford nuclear reservation. And she asked the Legislature to create a mandatory registration system for sex offenders.

Researchers also say women practice politics differently than men.

Lyn Kathlene, Susan Abrams Beck and Carroll collectively conclude that, "Women rely on a wider range of people and groups in formulating policy, approach issues from a broader and more inter-connected perspective, and tend to use their positions as committee chairs to facilitate interaction among committee members and witnesses rather than to control and direct debate."

Asking more questions of more people sure sounds like a good thing. So does approaching issues from a broader perspective and getting people to talk to each other, not just at each other.

If Washington voters have the fortitude to do what no other state has done and give women a chance to run this state, they won't be disappointed. Women have clearly demonstrated they have the style and substance to lead.

Together Murray, Cantwell and Gregoire can bury the Old Boys Club in this state once and for all and make sure everyone knows that women are no longer mere tokens struggling for survival.

Althea Cawley-Murphree is an '03 graduate of the UW's Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs.

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