Blue Spot

Democracy Now! | New Hampshire Becomes First State Senate with Female Majority History was made in New Hampshire on Tuesday as New Hampshire’s state senate became the first state legislative body in US history with a female majority. Thirteen of the state’s twenty-four senators are now women.

AMY GOODMAN: Yes, history was made in New Hampshire Tuesday, as New Hampshire’s state senate became the first state legislative body in US history with a female majority. Thirteen of the state’s twenty-four senators are now women. Nationally, less than one in four legislators is female. New Hampshire also has a female US senator for the first time in history, after Democrat Jeanne Shaheen defeated incumbent Republican John Sununu.

I’m joined by Nancy Mosher. She is president of the Planned Parenthood of Northern New England Action Fund. How did you do it?


NANCY MOSHER: Well, I’d love to take all the credit, but we worked really hard layering our political action with local and federal races in collaboration with our national PAC, as well as the America Votes organization in New Hampshire. I can’t tell you how helpful they were in helping us slice and dice the databases.

And what we did was we targeted women under fifty-five who were center or right-of-center, because we had research this year that showed that Planned Parenthood’s name is highly trusted by women in our country, and they really, really took us seriously when we told them about the positions of the candidates. So we were able to go out and expose McCain’s extraordinary, terribly terrible record on women’s health, zero percent rating with Planned Parenthood, as well as highlight the Senate race, the House races, where there were two pro-choice incumbents that we were working to reinstate, and the local senate races. So three-out-of-four of the targeted senate races that we worked on were won, and they were all women.


AMY GOODMAN: And the state senate, was it clear? Did people in New Hampshire realize they could possibly make history with a woman majority?


NANCY MOSHER: You know, I’m not really sure they did. I think there were some pundits who certainly were aware of it, but what we found when we were knocking on doors was that people really were unaware of the senate candidates. So if we could sort of grab their attention talking about McCain’s record, then we could say, “And by the way, you know, here’s what we have to tell you about your local senate candidate and where they stand on women’s health.” So it was very, you know, grassroots from the ground up.

Labels: New Hampshire, women's issues