<\/p>\n
DENVER \u2013 Colorado\u2019s major-party candidates for governor, U.S. Senate and U.S. House this year are named John, Tom, Greg, Scott, Steve, Mike, Jason, Mark, Ken, Owen, Randy, Victor, Floyd, Jared, Scott, Cory, Doug, Andrew, Mike, Ed and Don.<\/p>\n
Also Diana, Amy, Liane and Roni.<\/p>\n
Forty-two years after Colorado elected its first woman to Congress, women remain a rarity in the state\u2019s highest political offices, with little chance of change in 2014.<\/p>\n
New Hampshire\u2019s governor and entire congressional delegation are women. Twenty women serve in the U.S. Senate and 78 in the House. Yet in Colorado\u2019s history, it has elected only men to serve as governor and U.S. senator. Only four women have ever represented Colorado in the U.S. House.<\/p>\n
Pat Schroeder was the first. The Democrat won election in 1972 and represented her Denver district for 24 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was so excited when I won,\u201d she said in an interview with The Durango Herald. \u201cI thought that this is a really big change, and we\u2019re going to see a lot of women coming into Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n
But four decades later, Congress is still 82 percent male. It\u2019s even more skewed in Colorado, where less than 10 percent of members of Congress have been women since Schroeder was elected.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s all the more vexing because Colorado is a national leader in the number of women who serve in the Legislature, the traditional launching ground for higher office. With 42 women in its 100-person General Assembly, Colorado ranks second in the country. Vermont overtook Colorado for the top spot last year.<\/p>\n
The situation will not change significantly this year. Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Denver, is the only woman serving in Colorado\u2019s congressional delegation. She could be joined by at most three women \u2013 state Rep. Amy Stephens, R-Monument, who is seeking the GOP nomination for Senate; Liane \u201cBuffy\u201d McFadyen, a Democrat who is challenging U.S. Rep. Scott Tipton, R-Cortez; and Roni Bell Sylvester, a Weld County rancher who just entered the crowded GOP field in the governor\u2019s race last week. Aside from DeGette, all are underdogs in their races.<\/p>\n
When Schroeder talks to college women, she senses enthusiasm for working behind the scenes but not for running for office. In part, she blames changes in the media and the loss of the \u201cfairness doctrine\u201d that gave her equal time on television to answer charges leveled by her opponents. Candidates today face a barrage of personal attacks, which turns off both good women and men from running, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn many places, they\u2019ve cut down the tall trees and left the monkeys,\u201d Schroeder said.<\/p>\n
Colorado has been a national pioneer in electing women to the Legislature, according to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University. The state has never dropped out of the top 10 since the group began counting in the mid 1970s.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have a bench, but it doesn\u2019t seem to be playing out,\u201d said Debbie Walsh, director of the center.<\/p>\n
Colorado women have been successful in winning the state\u2019s second-tier offices, with four lieutenant governors, five secretaries of state and four treasurers since the late 1960s. But none has gone on to higher office.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t see necessarily that lieutenant governor is a path to the governor. Sometimes that can be a dead-end,\u201d Walsh said.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard to say why opportunities for women abound at the Legislature but disappear at higher levels.<\/p>\n
Senate President Morgan Carroll, who is the second woman in state history to hold the Senate\u2019s top post, thinks the money explains part of the paradox.<\/p>\n
Candidates for the state Legislature don\u2019t have to be rich or well-connected. But it\u2019s a different story for higher office.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou are talking orders of magnitude of different money,\u201d said Carroll, an Aurora Democrat.<\/p>\n
To raise money, candidates need to attract fundraisers and campaign professionals from the relatively small \u2013 and mostly male \u2013 class of political consultants in Colorado, she said.<\/p>\n
State Rep. Amy Stephens, R-Monument, is fighting that battle right now. She is running for the GOP nomination for Senate, but her fundraising last year lagged far behind Ken Buck, who lost the 2010 Senate race to Democrat Michael Bennet.<\/p>\n
Bennet ran a campaign that overtly courted female voters and painted Buck as out of touch with Colorado women. It worked. Bennet won narrowly, thanks to a large gender gap in his favor.<\/p>\n
Stephens thinks her presence on the ballot could help neutralize Democratic attempts to woo women\u2019s votes.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a party, we have the opportunity to do something different and new. The question is, will we do it?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Stephens said men are much more likely to volunteer to run for office than women, who often need to be convinced they are qualified.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery often, women need to be asked to run. Men don\u2019t,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
State Sen. Ellen Roberts of Durango is one of just two Republican women in the Senate. But there are now nine GOP women in the House, more than double from just a few years ago.<\/p>\n
Roberts said House Republican leaders concentrated on recruiting women to run.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a party priority, not just for electability but to speak to the issues that are on people\u2019s minds. I think it\u2019s pretty undisputed that women come at the job a little differently than men,\u201d Roberts said.<\/p>\n
The business community and grass-roots groups that play such a large role in picking candidates could pay more attention to recruiting women, she said.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s elected women can help by serving as mentors to younger women, Stephens said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can tell you as the first (female) House majority leader in my party in a long time, there were no women ahead of me to help me along,\u201d Stephens said.<\/p>\n
Carroll agreed that the doors are opening, slowly.<\/p>\n
\u201cI do think it is a question of time. But it has, temporarily, hit a cliff,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n