New York City Women Hoping to Ride Wave of Resistance to Elected Office

NEW YORK — For five years, Amanda Farias worked for Councilwoman Elizabeth S. Crowley, writing legislation, working on the budget and helping to manage the Women’s Caucus.

While collaborating with Crowley on an effort to get more women elected to the City Council, they noticed that the incumbent in Farias’ district in the South Bronx was term-limited.

Crowley encouraged Farias, 28, to consider running, even though to that point, she had never thought of doing so. Nonetheless, with Crowley’s prodding, Farias entered the race, jumping in “head first,” she said, as the youngest candidate in the race and the only woman.

Numerous people told Farias that she was too young to run, or otherwise lacked the qualifications. “They’d be like, ‘Oh, no. Don’t stress yourself with this. You’re too pretty,'” she said.

Farias finished second, behind the Rev. Ruben Diaz Sr., in the Democratic primary in September. Her boss, Crowley, defeated Robert F. Holden in the Democratic primary, but then lost her re-election bid to Holden, who ran on the Republican line.

Across the nation, women are running for office in record numbers. Emily’s List, a national organization dedicated to helping women win elected office, said 30,000 women had contacted them about running for office since the 2016 elections. During the two years of the 2016 election cycle, the group was contacted by 920 women, which was a record at the time.

The movement has been spurred on by the Women’s March, the #MeToo and Time’s Up movement, and the allegations of sexual abuse against President Donald Trump.

Yet in New York City, women now hold only 11 of 51 City Council seats, a 39 percent decline from 2009, when there were 18 women on the City Council.

A New York City initiative called 21 In ’21 wants to elect 21 women to the City Council in 2021, a step the organizers see as a way to increase the gender diversity of a body that directs an $88 billion budget, and also as the first step in putting enough women in the pipeline to run for governor, the Legislature, Congress and even president.

“A man in the White House was accused of sexual violence, sexual assault, sexual harassment by multiple women and that fact alone has inspired women across the country to participate on a level I have never imagined and have never seen,” Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said during a speech at a fundraiser Wednesday for 21 for ’21, at the Union Square apartment of Bill Samuels, founder of Effective NY, which helped launch the initiative.

“What makes a woman candidate so good is that her life experience is different. What she’s gone through is different. How she’s been treated is different,” Gillibrand told the group of mostly female candidates, elected officials, union members and organizers.

That different voice has been steadily dwindling on the city level.

In 2009, there were 18 women on the City Council, making up 35 percent of the legislative body. Before last year’s election, women comprised 26 percent of the Council, holding 13 out of 51 seats. That still put New York 10 percentage points behind the average for the 100 most populous cities in the country, according to a 2017 report from the City Council’s Women’s Caucus.

Now, after November’s election, there are 11 councilwomen comprising 21.5 percent of the body. Other cities such as Phoenix, Austin and Seattle have much higher percentages of female City Council members.

“People took their eye off the ball, not making it a priority,” Melissa Mark-Viverito, the former City Council speaker who launched 21 In ’21 with Crowley, said in an interview. “When I came in as speaker, I saw the writing on the wall and I was raising the concern.”

The current City Council speaker, Corey Johnson, who is the first male gay leader of the body, said he was uncomfortable with the low representation of women on the City Council.

“It’s an embarrassment for politics in New York City and bad for the council,” Johnson said. “If you look at Washington and Albany, when compromises need to be struck on polarizing issues where the temperature is hot, you have women able to step in and negotiate and come at politics with a different perspective.” Ten of the 11 women on the City Council are committee chairwomen, and the 11th, Laurie Cumbo of Brooklyn, is the majority leader, Johnson noted. But Mark-Viverito said she has heard from women on the council who are concerned about being stretched too thin because they are being asked to serve on multiple committees because of diversity concerns.

New York state’s other legislative bodies aren’t faring much better than the City Council. Women make up 32 percent of the Assembly, with 45 women among 141 current members. There are nine vacant seats. Women make up 23 percent of the Senate with 14 women out of 61 senators, with two vacant seats. New York has never had a female governor and New York City has never had a female mayor.

Twenty-two percent of the U.S. Senate are women; 19 percent of the House are women. Both figures represent an increase from previous Congresses, and the number seems poised to grow: The number of women considering running for office in the 2018 midterm elections is on pace to break records.

There are 50 female candidates for the Senate who have either filed papers or are likely to run, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. That’s more than the record 40 women who filed to run in 2016. There are 396 filed and likely candidates for the House. In 2012, a record 298 women filed to run for the House.

Moira McDermott, executive director of 21 In ’21, said the group has been contacted by approximately 50 women since the start of the #MeToo movement who are interested in running for City Council, and the group is doing one-on-one development with women who already know they are interested in running.

The mentoring helps women to develop a platform specific to the council district they intend to run in, while working on areas where they might need improvement as a candidate. The group is also developing a membership program to create a pipeline of female candidates, even if they are presently unsure if they want to run for office.

“We are creating that atmosphere that’s empowering,” McDermott said.

One of the main causes of the gap between genders on the City Council is what the Women’s Caucus report called the “political ambition gap.” Women are often forced to choose between their careers and their families, which limits the pool of female applicants for political office. Women also tend to underestimate their qualifications as a candidate while overestimating the barriers to victory, according to the report.

“I had a lot of reasons I shouldn’t run,” recalled Carlina Rivera, who was elected to represent the Lower East Side on the City Council last year. “The money, the time; maybe I should go and get another degree.” In the end, Rivera decided to run, influenced by her predecessor, Rosie Mendez, and Rep. Nydia M. Velázquez. The outreach from the political establishment to potential female candidates is also lacking because the political operatives and party leaders who serve as gatekeepers are often men. Recruiting must be strengthened to focus specifically on young women, the report found.

In order to reach the goal of having 21 female City Council members in 2021, 17 new women must be elected; only four women are slated to be incumbents. Alicka Ampry-Samuel, who was elected to represent central Brooklyn in the City Council last year, acknowledged it will be a tremendous challenge.

“The work starts now,” Ampry-Samuel said, while looking around the room full of women at the fundraiser. “We’ve identified a lot of young women with potential.”