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Republican Lambs and the Democratic Pipeline: Partisan Differences in the Nomination of Female Gubernatorial Candidates

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 September 2007

Stephen J. Stambough  and
Valerie R. O'Regan
Stephen J. Stambough
Affiliation:
CSU Fullerton
Valerie R. O'Regan
Affiliation:
CSU Fullerton
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Abstract

In 2005, a record nine women served as their state's governor. Of these, eight were elected. A crucial and often difficult step for women to be successful in gubernatorial elections is for them to win the nomination for governor by their political party. From 1976 to 2004, only 79 women have won their party's nomination for governor. The record number of women nominees in a single year is 10, set in 1998 and 2002. Even with these recent successes, women as governors are both fairly rare and an understudied area of political science. In this study, we explore two different explanations for the nomination of women to elected office: the pipeline and sacrificial lamb models. Although some research argues that the sacrificial lamb model is outdated and has been replaced by the pipeline model, we find that both of these models are relevant for the study of female gubernatorial nominations, but in the same way for each political party. By examining gubernatorial election data from 1976 to 2004, we present evidence suggesting that the pipeline model helps to explain the nomination of Democratic women, while the sacrificial lamb model helps to explain the nomination of Republican women. Though preliminary, these findings have important implications for the growing, pro-Democratic, partisan imbalance of women officeholders.

Type
Research Article
Information
Politics & Gender , Volume 3 , Issue 3 , September 2007 , pp. 349 - 368
Copyright
Copyright © The Women and Politics Research Section of the American Political Science Association 2007

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