In case you haven’t been paying attention, the victory by Donald Trump has resulted in more women making the decision to seek public office.
And if more women are participating in the political arena, it’s not necessarily because of any positive influence from the Trumpster. In some cases, it’s the indignity of seeing a misogynist in the nation’s highest office that has triggered women’s decision to run for office.
For ANDIE SAIZAN Andie Saizan, the idea of watching U.S. Rep. Garrett Graves as he obediently went along with virtually everything put forward by Trump was just too much.
The Holden Democrat was repulsed by Graves’s blind loyalty to Trump, including unconditional support of the NRA, proposals to scale back Medicaid/Medicare benefits, repeal of internet neutrality. And the treatment of children of illegal immigrants was just too much.
The 37-year-old mother of four is officially a candidate for the 6th District congressional seat now held by Graves.
She is part of the wave of women seeking public office, much of that being a reaction to Trump and his policies, said Jean Sinzdak of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
Andrea Dew Steele, president and founder of Emerge America agrees. She says there was an “immediate uptick in interest in our work” following Trump’s election. “And it has persisted through today. It’s unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”
Since the 1971, the year before Watergate, there has been a steady increase in the percentage of female office holders. Statewide elected offices have seen an increase in women from about 7 percent in 1971 to a high of 28 percent in 2000. Today, females make up about 24 percent of statewide elective offices. That percentage is about the same for state legislatures.
During that same time period, the number of women in Congress has gone from about 3 percent in 1971 to 20 percent today.
Saizan acknowledges that hers is an uphill fight because of what she describes as the “good old boy system” that she says “needs to be taken out.”
And she knows a thing or two about overcoming stiff odds. “At the age of 24, I had two children and was pregnant with a third when my husband walked out on me. Working for the Continental Kennel Club, I didn’t have a high-paying job. But they stood with me and supported me.
“I was on food stamps and everyone was telling me I couldn’t go back to college, but I did.
“Republicans love to talk about welfare queens but because I fought the system and got an education, today I pay more in taxes every year than I ever took in food stamps.”
Saizan, who works in the computer industry, believes that everything elected officials do should be geared toward empowering people. “When we turn our backs on people in need, we cannot call ourselves Christians,” she says.
Her quest may not be as quixotic as it might appear at first glance. “Edwin Edwards, a convicted felon, received 40 percent of the vote against Graves,” she said. “He can be beaten and he can be beaten on his own record.”
Saizan doesn’t give all the credit for her decision to run to Trump. It was Graves himself, she says, who pushed her to run, albeit inadvertently.
“Garrett convinced me to run when he trashed Medicaid/Medicare,” she says. “If I can’t bring my child to the doctor when she’s sick, something’s wrong with the system. Healthcare is too important to treat as some sort of political football. We use public dollars for insurance companies to bet against the health of Americans, and that’s wrong. If there’s something wrong with the Affordable Care Act (Obama Care), then fix it, don’t abandon it for some political philosophy.”
She said she and Graves differ in their stands on guns. “We are gun-owners at our house. I’m pro-Second Amendment. But we need laws that sponsor responsible gun ownership. Garrett doesn’t want that.”
As for Graves’s stance on net neutrality, she says he “either misled voters or he doesn’t understand net neutrality. It’s far worse than simply slowing down internet service. Say, for example, you’re on a cruise ship. The cruise line can make internet service a-la cart so you have to buy a specific service provider—and they charge more for it.”
She fired a broadside at both Graves and former U.S. Rep. Billy Tauzin when she said, “We must be able to negotiate the prices of prescription drugs.” Tauzin, a Democrat-turned-Republican from Lafourche Parish, as one of his last official acts as a member of Congress, pushed through a bill that prohibited the federal government from negotiating the prices of prescription drugs under Medicaid/Medicare.
Following that little coup, he promptly resigned and went to work as the chief lobbyist for the pharmaceutical industry.
Saizan is particularly incensed at the manner in which the Trump administration has gone about separating children from their parents on the nation’s southern border. And she isn’t shy about expressing her contempt for the president. “Any man who would try and justify separating children from their mothers like this is simply a coward. This is immoral! It was wrong when Hitler did it and it’s wrong now!
“I am not for open borders but I do know that we can treat this situation in a more humane manner. The fact that this is what we have come to only reiterates that America needs comprehensive immigration reform without racial bias or classism.”
She said the Democratic Party is the “party of the people but we don’t get our message across.”
She’s working on that.
