Nikki Haley offered the 150 gathered at the Hollywood American Legion veteran’s center in L.A. one quick mention of her goals of “defeating a dozen of the fellas” she was running against. It was the Republican’s lone reference to her gender, leaving the topic out of her stump speech.
She didn’t need to — the music that followed the speech did it for her.
As Haley handed off her microphone and got ready to start shaking hands with voters during her visit on Feb. 7, the first song to follow her speech was “American Girl” by Tom Petty. When that song from 1976 — about a small-town girl who’s dreaming about finding something greater in life — came to an end, it was followed by the 2012 country anthem “Woman in the White House” by Sheryl Crow.
“Don’t you think it’s time we put a woman in the White House / With a whole new attitude,” the song’s opening lyrics rang out. “We could use a little female common sense / Down on Pennsylvania Avenue / After 230-something years of waiting / It’s way past overdue.”
Crow rerecorded the song in 2020 to reiterate her original message of getting a women in the White House.
“There’s always been amazing women out there that are fully capable of leading our country, and in a more mature fashion than we’ve seen in the last few years,” Crow said in a 2020 interview with NME Magazine. “Kamala Harris, Susan Rice and Stacey Abrams would all do a wonderful job. I’m just hoping that, at this moment, when a woman comes in, that we see her become president eventually.”
William E. Pascarella Jr. — a 63-year-old resident of San Gabriel — waited in a line that snaked around the entire room after Haley’s speech for a chance to talk with her and shake her hand.
“I don’t think there was anything [she said] that I didn’t agree with,” Pascarella said after meeting Haley. “We need to change, and maybe it might take a woman.”
Less than a month later, she became the first woman in history to win a Republican presidential primary by earning 62.8% percent of the vote in Washington, DC on March 3. A few days later, on Super Tuesday, she won a second state — Vermont with 50.2% percent of the vote.
Before her state primary wins, she went on record with a confident claim about this year’s election: “There will be a female president of the United States,” she said repeatedly while campaigning across the country to emphasize the advanced ages of Trump and Biden. “It will be either me or Kamala Harris.”
But on March 6, the road to the nation’s first female president hit another roadblock.
Haley suspended her campaign the morning after Super Tuesday.
Nearly eight years after Hillary Clinton famously lost the Electoral College to Donald Trump in 2016, reaching that milestone feels even farther away for many women.
That includes Kelly Dittmar, director of research and scholar at Rutgers University’s Center for American Women and Politics. She said seeing failed attempts at a female president is even more difficult after how close Clinton came in 2016. The former secretary of state and senator won the popular vote by three million votes.
“We had a woman who effectively won, were it not for the Electoral College,” Dittmar said. “I don’t have a strong opinion about the Electoral College — you’ve got to win by the rules as they are, and she didn’t. But in terms of generating votes, she did. The reaction to that could have been, ‘Hey, a woman can beat Trump.’ But instead, it was, ‘Well, I don’t know. I don’t think we’re ready.’”
Dittmar and her colleagues at the Center for American Women and Politics recently put out a report exploring women’s political representation and political power across five states — Georgia, Illinois, Nevada, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania.
The report, titled “Rethinking Women’s Political Power,” includes nearly 200 interviews with different officeholders in these states.
“We wanted to better interrogate women’s political power, and to do so we knew we needed to go beyond numbers and really take a qualitative look within the state political ecosystems,” Dittmar said.
In the 117th Congress, there were 24 women in the Senate and 122 women in the House, with 106 Democrats and 40 Republicans represented. That’s an all-time high.
For municipal officeholders in 2024, including mayoral positions and city councils, women held 32% of the roles.
Dittmar said sheer representation doesn’t always equate to political power.
“In Nevada, you see the examples of where women are, yes, a majority of the state legislature, but then you have women state legislators telling us the patriarchal dynamics in this place are real, the racism within this institution is real,” Dittmar said. “Folks in Nevada are saying, ‘And by the way, the legislature is not the most powerful political body in the state. It’s actually the Clark County Commissioners and there’s only one woman on it.’”
In California specifically, about 40% of municipal offices are held by women — slightly higher than the national average.
There’s a big change coming regarding female representation in California, which has a long record of female senators. Rep. Adam Schiff and former Dodger Steve Garvey received the most votes in the Super Tuesday Senate primary and clinched the top two spots, meaning that for the first time in over 30 years, California won’t be represented by a woman in the U.S. Senate.
“We have a record number of women just leaving Congress,” Dittmar said. “You’re dealing with that in California. All of those things are worrisome because stasis is a lack of progress.”
Close the Gap California has worked since 2013 to get more women elected to office across the Golden State. The group’s goal is to completely close the gender gap in the California Legislature by 2028.
With just a few years left to go to reach the state’s first “motherlode” — a term the organization has re-purposed to represent the potential 50/50 gender split in the Legislature — the gap is getting smaller.
In less than a decade since the organization’s founding, the state Legislature has jumped from 22% women to 42%. There are currently 50 women in the 120-person legislature — just 10 away from the goal to completely split the gender representation.
“Just because our magic number of 60 women is possible — and we are closer than ever — does not mean it is inevitable,” Close the Gap’s Executive Director Susannah Delano wrote in the organization’s 2023 end-of-the-year report.
“We refused to settle for yet one more decade of incremental progress (at best),” she wrote. “We have shown that California can do better.”
For others, especially right-leaning voters, gender identity isn’t as important when it comes to what they want from their elected leaders. For Jennifer Bryant, a registered nurse from Marshalltown, Iowa who participated in the caucus process earlier this year, what’s more important is the candidates’ values.
Back in January, Bryant was split in her support for Haley and Trump. Now, the choice has been made for her.
“I just know how hard Trump works, so he’ll stand up for the truth,” Bryant said. “He won’t compromise, and it’s really important. We need that right now.”
Voters in some states — like Florida, Maryland and New York — will see abortion on the ballot this year. In Arizona, organizers have said they’ve surpassed 500,000 signatures, more than enough to get a citizen-led initiative on the ballot. The effort is meant to put a constitutional amendment on the state’s ballot in November that would protect the right and access to abortion.
Although reproductive rights don’t just apply to women, it’s largely a female-focused issue. When it comes to the election, Dittmar said it can mobilize voters and increase turnout.
“Unlike in 2016 where the abortion issue mobilized Republicans because of a Supreme Court appointment, this year it’s about the regressive loss, taking away abortion rights,” Dittmar said. “Democrats are using that as a launching pad to make the case for protections and fighting them. And of course, then in the states where abortion-related amendments have been on the ballot, we’ve seen Democrats do better.”
Since Haley suspended her presidential campaign, she’s announced that she’s joining the Hudson Institute, a Washington DC-based conservative think tank that specializes in foreign policy affairs.
She’s joining as the institute’s Walter P. Stern chairperson, a position named for Hudson’s former chairperson who died in 2022.
“When our policymakers fail to call out our enemies or acknowledge the importance of our alliances, the world is less safe,” Haley wrote in an email blast announcing her new job. “That is why Hudson Institute’s work is so critical. They believe the American people should have the facts and policymakers should have the solutions to support a secure, free, and prosperous future.”
With Haley — and any hope for a female president in 2024 — out of the race, that leaves Haley’s donors and voters wondering who to back.
Trump has been vocal about his distaste for Haley’s support. The Biden-Harris campaign was quick to launch ads targeting Haley voters. One ad used imagery and audio clips of Trump bashing Haley to convince her supporters to consider Biden.
“If you voted for Nikki Haley, Donald Trump doesn’t want your vote,” one ad says. “Save America. Join us.”