MediaWatch: January 1992
Table of Contents:
CBS Errs on Senate
FEMINIST FALLACY
Do women's groups really want women in government? Ask past female GOP candidates. On the November 30 CBS Evening News, Bob Schieffer reported: "The outrage that many women felt in the wake of the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings is apparently causing more and more women to run for public office. And a record number of women are contemplating Senate campaigns."
Wrong. To date, there are eight women slated to run in primaries for U.S. Senate seats nationwide, down from nine in the 1990 general election. Schieffer highlighted only liberal candidates Geraldine Ferraro, Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. But do women's groups back all women candidates or just ones who support their liberal agenda?
Since 1980, 22 women have mounted serious runs for U.S. Senate seats. If each had won, there would be 14 Republican women and 8 Democratic women in a Republican-controlled Senate. In 1990 nine women, seven Republicans and two Democrats, ran for the Senate. The National Organization for Women endorsed only the two Democratic candidates; the Women's Campaign Fund, two Democrats and one pro-choice Republican; and the National Women's Political Caucus, two Democrats and two liberal Republicans.
Feminist groups used the Thomas hearings to trumpet the need for more women in the Senate, but NOW and the National Women's Political Caucus backed Judiciary Committee members Paul Simon and Herb Kohl, not their Republican female opponents, Lynn Martin and Susan Engeleiter.
