Sarah Palin's resignation to reduce women governors to six

Sarah Palin's surprise announcement today that she will step down this month as Alaska's governor has stirred a firestorm of conjecture about her motives and political prospects.

There is one particularly concrete consequence, however: she will be the third woman governor to leave office since the November elections in the wake of President Obama tapping two women governors for his cabinet (Kansas' Kathleen Sebelius and Arizona's Janet Napolitano). Women make up a majority of today's electorate, but come August, there will be 44 male governors and only six female governors, two of whom (Hawaii's Linda Lingle and Michigan's Jennifer Granholm) are barred from running for third terms next year. According to the invaluable Center for American Women in Politics, a majority of states have never had a woman governor in their history.

As highlighted in my commentary in Roll Call this week with Cindy Terrell, representation of women in elected office remains very low. We need to talk about it more, and urge more women to run, urge more partisans to promote women for office and consider changes to our electoral laws to create more incentives for women to run viable campaigns.

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Comments

[weatherwaxx]

Her resignation may reduce the NUMBER of women who are governors, but it RAISES the average IQ.

[SiberianRat]

Well, look at the bright side: Her resignation reduces the number of completely insane female governors to zero (I hope).

[twisted-european]

... and makes way for a person more eligible for office. One can only hope for change in Alaska!

[EndTheEcho]

Well if MInnesota's Governor Tim Pawlenty were to cut and run....er, I mean resign, then our Lt. Gov Carol Molnau would add to the count of female governors, but I think she would be worse than Tim "less than 50 (per) cent" Pawlenty and I can't stand that guy.