WASHINGTON — Republican women are hoping to make history in the Georgia runoff election with Kelly Loeffler, who would be the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from the state if she wins.
A record number of conservative women won congressional seats in 2020, helping to reenergize Republicans working to elect Loeffler, who was appointed to the seat she now holds to fill a vacancy.
She is only the second Republican woman from Georgia to hold a seat in Congress. When Rep.-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene is sworn in next year, the total number of Republican women from Georgia who have served in Congress will increase to three. The other was Rep. Karen Handel, who had a partial term in Congress after winning a special election.
“For a long, long, long, long, long, long time, Georgia has been, predominantly men have been the leaders in everything, and we’re a little slower to elevate our women,” said Georgia Republican National Committeewoman Ginger Howard, “which is really sad to me, because there’s so many very, very qualified, wonderful women who would be great. But we don’t do enough to empower them.”
Rebecca Felton of Georgia became the first woman in U.S. history in 1922 to have the title of senator after she was appointed to fill a seat. Nearly a hundred years later, Loeffler is seeking to become the first woman elected to that position from Georgia.
Republicans have traditionally avoided what they consider to be identity politics. But women involved in the effort in Georgia to elect Loeffler embraced the possibility that the Atlanta Dream co-owner and former business executive could be part of a wave of Republican women who won seats this election cycle.
They said a successful model exists now for Republican female candidates, citing the achievements of New York Rep. Elise Stefanik’s recruitment program and political action committee E-PAC, which is credited with more than doubling the number of GOP women elected to the next Congress, and the hard-fought victories of Republican women competing for the Senate in recent cycles.
“I think the wave of the future for Republicans are the conservative, pro-life women, like the ones that were elected this past November,” said Penny Nance, president of Concerned Women for America, a Christian conservative group.
Loeffler is competing in the runoff against Atlanta-based pastor and Democrat Raphael Warnock, who would be Georgia’s first Black senator if he wins the Jan. 5 special election. Early voting began Monday and more than 900,000 ballots have already been cast in the election.
Republican Sen. David Perdue and Democrat Jon Ossoff are competing for a separate Senate seat in the runoff.
Appointed by Georgia’s governor last December to fill a vacancy left by the retirement of former Republican Sen. Johnny Isakson, Loeffler is seeking election for the remainder of his term. A regular election for that Senate seat will be held in 2022.
Georgia currently has one female member in the House of Representatives, Democratic Rep. Lucy McBath, who will be joined in the House in January by Republican Greene.
The issue of gender parity in Congress has increasingly become a priority for Republican women, who said Loeffler should do more to promote the fact that she would be the first woman senator from Georgia.
“Women make up half of the population in the country and should be well represented in Congress,” Jessica Anderson, executive director of conservative group Heritage Action, told McClatchy.
Anderson, whose organization has committed to spending $2 million in support of Loeffler and Perdue in the special election, said that all candidates should be considered first based on their compatibility for the office. But if a female candidate does meet that criteria, Anderson said, mentioning Loeffler, the uniqueness of her candidacy should be part of the conversation.
“I don’t think that’s identity politics at all. I think that’s just recognizing the diverse demographics of the country, and there should be representation for it,” Anderson said.
Republicans have lagged significantly behind Democrats in electing women to Congress, where overall the number of women serving does not come close to matching the breakdown of women in the national population.
Women make up only a third of political candidates and more Democratic women have run for office than Republican women, said Jessica Grounds, professor of Women and Politics at Pepperdine University and a co-founder of the women’s leadership consulting firm Mine the Gap.
Women running as Republicans also lose primaries at twice the rate as women who run as Democrats, she said, because they do not have the same level of organizational support from women-focused groups as liberal candidates have had.
Organizations that provide financial support to women candidates have typically been centered around the issue of abortion rights. Liberal heavyweights such as EMILY’s List and NARAL Pro-Choice America support contenders who are pro-abortion rights and conservative organizations like Concerned Women for America (CWA) and the Susan B. Anthony List back candidates who are anti-abortion.
Relatively new groups such as Stefanik’s E-PAC and Winning for Women — another Republican political action committee that has emerged in the past several years — are not issue-oriented and have bolstered the structural support for women candidates on the right.
Former New Hampshire Sen. Kelly Ayotte, who is a Winning for Women board member, said in an interview that the PAC intends to provide a similar roadmap for success that Democratic groups have offered their candidates.
Winning for Women endorsed Loeffler immediately after her appointment to the Senate and contributed the maximum allowable amount to her campaign during the primary. It also plans to be involved in the runoff election.
Ayotte was the first Republican woman elected to the Senate from her state and the first female attorney general in New Hampshire’s history. “To me, it’s not something you really run on because you’re running on your capabilities,” she said.
“And Sen. Loeffler is running on her qualifications, her capabilities and what she wants to accomplish for the people of Georgia,” Ayotte said.
Loeffler’s campaign spokesman did not respond to requests for an interview or comment.
SBA List also endorsed Loeffler in the primary and has spent more than $4.6 million supporting her in the runoff election. CWA is running a bus tour in Georgia that highlights Loeffler’s record on issues of importance to the group.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of SBA List, said that she met with the heads of the other women’s groups who share her political views early in the political cycle, and they sought to consolidate their financial efforts in races they perceived to be winnable. They continue to keep in contact, she said.
“A lot of it is just interpersonal. Encouragement,” Dannenfelser said. “That friendship really means a lot to everyone. But especially if you’re a newcomer to the scene, which a lot of women are.”
The wealthiest member of Congress, Loeffler largely self-funded in the primary, helping her to avoid an early hurdle that has tripped up other Republican women competing for political office.
Loeffler was an executive at Intercontinental Exchange, a company that her husband Jeffrey Sprecher founded. She later served as CEO of Bakkt, a subsidiary of the Fortune 500 company.
The runoff election has attracted extraordinary national interest because it will decide which political party controls the Senate. Experts estimate that outside spending combined with candidate spending could reach a half-billion dollars.
Ilyse Hogue, president of the liberal pro-abortion rights group NARAL, criticized Loeffler, saying the Republican does not support policies that advance women.
“What looks like progress is women who are elected because they are hungry to represent women, and she does not fall in that category,” Hogue said. “She has chosen not to do that in favor of achieving her own personal power by attaching to a system of beliefs that actually is dependent on oppressing women.”
Republican women said that Loeffler should lean into the history she would be making with her election, but they also encouraged her to tout her experience in the private sector.
“She really is living the American Dream,” Howard, the RNC committeewoman from Georgia, said. “A lot of people, including her opponent and the other side, are trying to poke holes in her success. But that’s what we want in America. That’s what the Republican Party stands for. We want people to succeed. There’s nothing wrong with success.”
