Women to Watch
Several women are stepping up to challenge incumbents in the 2010 elections. Here are two to watch, and more importantly, if you like what you learn – support them and contribute to their campaigns.
Connie Saltonstall will challenge Rep. Bart Stupak for Michigan’s First Congressional District in the August Democratic Primary. According to her website, Saltonstall served as a Charlevoix County Commissioner in 2006, taught fourth grade in the Charlevoix Schools and was elected to the Charlevoix Board of Education in 1978. She was appointed to the Michigan Association of School Boards Taxation Committee, and served a three-year term on the Charlevoix County Commission on Aging. Saltonstall is a mediator and board member with Northern Community Mediation and board president of Hospice of Northwest Michigan.
Saltonstall says healthcare is a top priority for her campaign and issued this statement in a press release, ““Our Congressman has let us down. Bart Stupak has threatened to block healthcare reform unless the Amendment that bears his name is included in the final bill. I believe that he has a right to his personal, religious views, but to deprive his constituents of needed healthcare reform because of those views is reprehensible.”
Learn more at the campaign website http://conniesaltonstall.com and on Twitter and Facebook.
In Pennsylvania’s 16th Congressional District, Lois Herr will once again challenge Rep. Joe Pitts of the Stupak-Pitts Amendment. Herr ran against Pitts in 2004 and 2006. In 2006 she received approximately 40 percent of the vote. Like Saltonstall, Herr says healthcare is a priority as is investing in alternative energy and conservation.
Herr worked in the telecommunications industry and in the Office of Management and Budget as part of the President’s Executive Interexchange Program under President Ford. She has worked with Elizabethtown College since 1993 as a teacher, administrator and Scholar-in-Residence. She was chair of the Lancaster County Planning Commission and executive director of the Lancaster County Democratic Committee. Herr is also the author of the book “Women, Power and AT&T: Winning Rights in the Workplace.”
Herr has already been endorsed by the National Organization for Women, the National Women’s Political Caucus, the Women’s Campaign Forum and the Feminist Majority Foundation.
Learn more about Herr at her campaign website http://www.herr2010.com/index.htm and on Twitter.
Candidates like Saltonstall and Herr can help us reach a critical mass of qualified women in Congress. As we’ve stated before, “Diverse leadership leads to better problem solving, more creativity, representative government.” And let’s not forget the study from Stanford and the University of Chicago that says women legislators introduce more bills and bring in more money to their districts than men do.
Ladies, keep an eye on these ladies.
