While there will be many women voting the democratic ticket, there is no question that that in the northern states the republican party will be largely the gainer and if there was any hope of the sporting candidate, “Wet Jim”, being elected, it has gone a-glimmering. This in spite of the fact that Tennessee, the state to put suffrage across, is normally democratic. The fact remains that nearly two-thirds of the states voting for suffrage are republican and that the democrats only espoused the cause when it became a case of necessity, as they feared to anger the women in those states where they had already obtained the ballot.
— “Women Are Now Voters,” Chariton Herald-Patriot, August 19, 1920. Note, with the reference to Democratic presidential candidate James Cox, how the issue of women’s suffrage was intertwined with Prohibition.
Up through and including the 2012 election, Iowa was hounded for never having elected a woman to Congress or the governorship. But when it’s time to celebrate the 1920 centennial of the 19th Amendment, giving women across the nation the right to vote, Iowa will have checked every one of those boxes. (Your move, Vermont.)
Iowa’s congressional delegation is going to be equally split by gender for both the House and Senate, and not only is there a female governor, we have our first elected female governor in Kim Reynolds. The election of Abby Finkenauer and Cindy Axne to the U.S. House breaks the glass ceiling on that side of Congress, following Joni Ernst on the Senate side. Depending on how you classify Tuesday’s nationwide results, 2018 is the first time since 1978 that an Iowa incumbent in the House — two, in fact — lost to a new opponent in a non-wave election.
So, barring surprises, in 2020 Iowa will have Republican women in three top positions — Reynolds, Ernst, and Speaker of the House Linda Upmeyer — and Democratic women in two more, Axne and Finkenauer. Finkenauer was on track to be the youngest person ever elected to Congress — enough to get written up in the Atlantic — until an earthquake primary in New York City you might have heard about.
In another marker of change, the Iowa Legislature will have its first Jennifer (Konfrst, in a suburban Polk County seat) and the U.S. House its second (Wexton, who picked off Barbara Comstock in the only near-DC Beltway legislative seat Republicans controlled).
One note of cross-party Iowa-ness: Both Reynolds and Axne played 6-on-6 basketball. How many states have two high-profile female politicians who played high school sports? (Of course, it’s not nearly as consequential as being the first female fighter pilot to serve in combat, like Arizona’s Martha McSally, just interesting.)