That smug, can’t-catch-me grin. Those wee flailing hands, attempting to punctuate facts that don’t exist. That whiny voice huffing, “The biggest. Ever. Believe me.” I’ve long thought it true, but now statistics prove it: There’s something about Donald Trump standing at the presidential podium that makes women want to run.
They’re not running away from politics, though; they’re sprinting toward it — in vast, pissed-off, let’s-do-this numbers. Attendance was 66 percent higher than usual at Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics’ “Ready to Run” workshop in March, for women interested in seeking office; they had to turn folks away. EMILY’s list, a group that helps pro-choice Democratic women get elected, talked to 900 women who wanted to run during the 2016 election cycle; this year they’ve heard from 11,000.
“After this election cycle, I think a lot of women were just like, ‘You know, it’s enough. I need to find a way to get involved and make my political voice heard,’” says Maimuna Syed, the brand-new executive director of Emerge California.