Trump's election leads to spike in female candidates
LANSING, Mich. (WJBK) - The election of Donald Trump as president has spawned a spike in the number of Democratic women in the state interested in running for office.
In one of the most explosive moments of the presidential campaign, Trump talked about his sexual encounters with women and many women were offended. And when he was elected, some women in Michigan did something about it.
Beth Kelly is the director of Emerge, a training program designed to bring more Democratic women into the political process. She says her phone was ringing off the hook.
"On Election Day we had I believe 17 applications for the 2017 program. By the end of the year when we closed the application deadline, we had close to a 100 and that's in contrast to our first year where all we had about 20 applications total," she said.
Kelly also figures if Hillary Clinton had won, more women would have wanted to get in the game. She believes there are not enough women in the state legislature because women have to be asked repeatedly to run. Some feel they are not qualified to run and they don't like to raise money.
Some women also worry about the dirty mudslinging aspect of running for office, but now they are over coming those objections.
"There were some overtly sexist comments made and I think that that scared a lot of women. A lot of women said no, m not going to accept this, it's not OK, and if not me than who? It really spawned a lot of women to wake up and step forward and say now is the time," Kelly said.
But much to her chagrin, over half of the women voted for Trump, so what was the difference between those voters and females voters who did not vote for Trump?
"Because we work in the political arena, I think we are a little more in tune with what's happening than folks who don't normally work. It's a rare breed to work in politics," Kelly said.
Kelly hopes to see more than four women in the Senate of the 38 senators, and more than 30 in the House next year where there are 110 members.