In one US state, women politicians dominate. What pointers can it offer Kamala Harris?

In a country where women still find it challenging to reach high office, the swing state of Michigan is an outlier.

Its three most senior elected officials are all women - nationally women fill only around a quarter of senior political roles.

With no woman having ever served as president, the state run by women could offer pointers for a route to the White House for Democrat Kamala Harris.

Opinion polling does not offer a clear answer on whether people are less willing to vote for a woman, but they certainly end up electing fewer overall.

And you don’t have to look far to find the perception that women still have to fight harder to get elected.

Robyn Kepplinger may be one of the few in her pro-gun, anti-abortion rural western Michigan town who is thrilled at the chance to vote for a Democratic woman for president.

The 33-year-old says she could not imagine a better candidate to lead the country "in the direction that we need to go".

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Ms Kepplinger, a resident of Jenison, has thrown her support behind Vice-President Harris. On Friday, the 59-year-old secured enough delegate votes to become Democratic nominee following President Joe Biden’s decision to drop out of the race on 21 July.

But even some Harris fans worry that being a woman could be a significant obstacle between her and the presidency. “For anyone to be doing something that has not been done before, it's difficult,” Ms Kepplinger said. “I don't think that most people are behind a change as drastic as a female leader.”

Robin Kepplinger is excited about the prospect of voting for Ms Harris

Such a change, however, has proven possible in the key battleground state of Michigan, where three female Democrats now hold the top positions: Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, and Attorney General Dana Nessel. In fact, Michigan has had two female Democratic governors in the past 20 years, Jennifer Granholm and Ms Whitmer.

Only around a quarter of senators and state governors in the US are women. The figure for representatives is slightly higher at 29%.

“Women are still underestimated,” said Marcie Paul, the chair of Fems for Dems, an advocacy group for liberal women in Michigan. “It’s going to be no different for her [Ms Harris], I believe, than it was when they said three women on the top of the ticket cannot possibly win in Michigan.”

Ms Harris, however, shares some of the traits that made women in Michigan successful candidates, according to Kim Gates, Democratic chair of Kent County, Michigan.

Ms Harris, Ms Whitmer and Ms Granholm managed to strike a balance between compassion and strength as “straight-talking, strong women”, Ms Gates said.

“They have great speaking skills. They’re able to sound like they’re talking to the average person,” she said. “They’re compassionate.”

Combining straight-talking, strength and compassion is easier said than done, but if Ms Harris can, it may bode well for her.

Female candidates may also prove more adept than men at galvanising voters around the issue of reproductive rights after the fall of Roe v Wade.

Voters nationwide cite abortion rights among the most important election issues, with one recent poll from KFF finding 1 in 8 voters saw it as a top priority for November. The issue has been relevant at the polls, with anti-abortion advocates losing a series of contests in Republican states since the federal right to abortion was overturned in 2022. In the past two years, a handful of states have passed ballot measures protecting the right to abortion, including in the Republican strongholds of Kansas, Kentucky and Ohio.

Gretchen Whitmer rode to victory partly on women's healthcare issues

The cause helped propel Ms Whitmer to victory in her race for re-election in Michigan in 2022, the same year Michigan residents voted to enshrine abortion rights in the state’s constitution. During Ms Harris’ tenure, she has shown a strong focus on reproductive rights, recently visiting a clinic that provides abortions.

It’s an area where her gender could prove an advantage, said Adrian Hemond, a political strategist in Michigan.

“Vice-President Harris is a much better messenger on that issue than Joe Biden,” he said.

‘Excitement in the air’

As concerns grew around 81-year-old Mr Biden’s ability to beat Trump in November, some major donors paused funds when the president’s poll numbers were falling in swing states, including Michigan.

Meanwhile, Trump, 78, also saw a boost in personal ratings after a gunman attempted to assassinate him at a rally in Pennsylvania last month.

But after Mr Biden stepped down, Ms Harris received a record level of donations - $81m (£63m) within 24 hours. Since then, a Morning Consult poll released on Tuesday showed Harris’s approval rating at 50%, up from 43% a week previously, and a separate poll from Reuters/Ipsos found Ms Harris was supported by 43% of registered voters, and Trump supported by 42%.

Some Democratic campaigners in Michigan say that her background as a black woman has helped Ms Harris reach some voters. Her Indian heritage - and the fact she is significantly younger than both Mr Biden and Trump - are also said to boost her appeal to some of the electorate.

Greg Bowens, a member of the executive board of the NAACP in Grosse Pointe, said there is “excitement in the air” in Detroit. He added this hasn’t been seen in Detroit - Michigan's largest majority African-American city - since Barack Obama, the first black president.

“She has electrified black and brown folks,” he said.

While an apparent wave of enthusiasm grows among some Democratic voters, Ms Harris has been subjected to attacks based on her gender and background.

A 2021 video of Trump’s running mate JD Vance resurfaced has resurfaced, with the Republican criticising the political left - including Ms Harris - for being full of “childless cat ladies with miserable lives”. The remark was criticised widely, including by actor Jennifer Aniston, but they were seized on by some conservative figures on social media, who argued that Ms Harris is less suitable to be president because she lacks a stake in the future. Ms Harris is step-mother to her husband’s two children.

More generally, female candidates face more superficial criticisms than male politicians about how they look, how they carry themselves and how they speak, said Ms Paul, the Fems for Dems leader who helps encourage women to vote and run for office.

It’s a point seemingly not lost on many voters - a Pew Research Center poll from September 2023 said 62% of Americans believed there was too much of a focus on female candidates’ appearances, versus 35% for male candidates.

Female politicians of colour are targeted more than their white male counterparts, said Nazita Lajevardi, a Michigan State University political science professor. “Women of colour politicians face attacks that are gendered and raced at the same time,” she said. “They report experiencing more verbal attacks, more online abuse."

Female, black public figures can be subjected to scrutiny of their past sexual history, said Jamil Scott, an assistant professor of government at Georgetown University. Images have circulated on social media with criticisms of Ms Harris’ past romantic partners. Whatever the motivation for circulating these images, Ms Harris has been married to Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff for 10 years.

Ms Scott said that as a female politician, Ms Harris will also likely be forced to walk a tightrope where she is perceived as strong in attacking her Republican rival, but doesn’t risk being seen as angry.

“We want women to be tough as candidates, but then we don't want them to be too tough,” she said.

Ms Scott pointed to Hillary Clinton - the first US major party female presidential candidate - who was perceived by some to be unlikeable and too aggressive in her attacks against Trump in 2016.

Trump attempted to exploit this sense, famously calling Ms Clinton a “nasty woman”.

While Ms Harris's background and stance on abortion may appeal to some, they do not guarantee support among left-leaning voters.

Tressa Johnson, a 31-year-old liberal voter from Grand Rapids, believes Ms Harris’s policy stances are what make her undesirable - not her ethnicity or gender. She says the vice-president’s past as a tough-on-crime prosecutor and the Biden administration’s limited criticism of Israel’s actions in Gaza make her a poor candidate.

“People just want to go, ‘Look, she's a woman of colour,’” said Ms Johnson, who plans to vote for Green Party candidate Jill Stein. “I just want a competent person that cares about the working class people in this country.”

Tressa Johnson, left, is backing the Green Party candidate

A ‘potent’ rival in Trump

What Ms Whitmer’s Michigan victory can’t help the Harris campaign with is how to beat a candidate as high profile as Trump. Mr Hemond, the political strategist, said that while Ms Whitmer defeated two “ill-equipped” Republican opponents, Ms Harris is up against a tougher candidate.

“It is very fair to say that Donald Trump is a much more potent electoral force,” he said.

The former president and his supporters have already started to attack Ms Harris based on her gender and ethnicity.

Echoing comments from Trump’s 2016 race, in which the former president accused Ms Clinton of playing the “woman card” to attract voters, Trump’s allies have claimed Ms Harris was picked solely for the purpose of “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” (DEI).

It’s the kind of attack that Ms Harris would do best to ignore, as Ms Whitmer has done, said Mr Hemond.

During Ms Whitmer’s run for governor and time in office, she has been subjected to a host of sexist remarks, including from Michigan’s former Republican Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, who once said he had “spanked” Ms Whitmer “hard” while working with her on the state’s budget.

“Gov. Whitmer largely let others litigate the sexist comments that were made about her, which was smart,” Mr Hemond said. “There does seem to be a perceptual danger for female candidates in engaging directly with these types of comments.”

Mr Hemond added that ignoring these types of comments often makes for an effective strategy because a majority of voters are women themselves, many of whom can relate to having to handle “sexist comments gracefully”.

Some liberal residents in Michigan hope voters will see beyond the DEI attacks against Ms Harris.

“She is intelligent, she has deep experience governing and making policy,” said Brandy, a voter in Southeast Michigan.

The Morning Consult poll also showed that Ms Harris’ ratings are a significant improvement on Mr Biden’s in swing states, and that she has gained 5 points in Michigan.

But Trump has strong support here too. A week after the shooting, he spoke to a crowd of 12,000 in Grand Rapids in his first public rally since the attack.

It’s a state Trump won by 11,000 votes in 2016 when he beat Hillary Clinton. Mr Biden won it back in 2020 by over 100,000 votes.

Trump saw a huge crowd in Grand Rapids after his failed assassination attempt

A changing climate

In some respects, the political backdrop has changed since 2016, Ms Scott said.

Voters were “not excited about Hillary Clinton”, she said. “They didn't see the power in the moment of having a woman run for president.’’

But another wave of women may have been inspired by Ms Clinton’s defeat, and Trump’s victory, Ms Scott said. After millions of women participated in marches across the US to protest Trump’s inauguration, the country saw a record number of female candidates running for office in 2018.

Meanwhile, the percentage of Americans who believe men better suited to politics than women fell from 19% in 2014 to 14% in 2018, according to data from the University of Chicago’s National Opinion Research Center. In 1975, 47% of Americans believed men made better politicians than women.

Ms Harris has already seen an outpouring of support, in particular among black women and on social media, where memes of the vice-president are ubiquitous.

She is framing the race in November as a choice between “freedom” and “chaos” under Trump who she points out has been convicted of 34 felonies.

But ultimately, it may be her diverse background and experience that pulls more voters into the race, experts said.

“So many people see themselves in her, especially in a state like Michigan, where many people are of immigrant backgrounds or are black or South Asian,” said Ms Lajevardi, the Michigan State professor. “It matters when someone knows your community’s interests and seeks to represent them.”

Technically, Ms Harris became the first female president in 2021 - when she was handed presidential powers for 85 minutes while Mr Biden underwent a health check. Now the challenge for her campaign is to see whether she can extend that to four years.

Michigan offers pointers as to how women can take the top jobs, and stay in them.

Lead image: Getty

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