Feminist scholars are identifying important ways that women’s opportunities for executive office differ from other offices. In order to advance this debate, this paper focuses subnationally on a set of offices that have received scant scholarly attention: statewide elective executive offices in the United States. These offices--which total about 300 across 50 states--provide an excellent data source for studying women’s access to executive office. Scholars have yet to examine how both formal and informal political party practices within states may affect women’s opportunities for these offices. The status of women of color with respect to these offices has also been overlooked.
The departure point of this paper is that we can conceptualize statewide executive candidates as a party slate. Unlike most U.S. elections, these elections involve the simultaneous election of multiple partisan positions on a statewide basis. Although the races are contested individually—office by office—the party nominees arguably approximate a party slate. Using this party slate perspective, I ask whether “diverse” candidates in terms of gender and/or race beget more diverse candidates, or whether there is a limit to how many diverse candidates can seek executive positions simultaneously. I consider the unique situation of women of color candidates, given that they are the worst represented of the race-gender subgroups.
I analyze the cross-state variation in women's access to statewide offices using a database of women and minority candidates assembled from Center for American Women and Politics data, state election results from the fifty states, and other sources. I also draw on elite interviews that I conducted in several states about statewide candidate emergence and campaigns.
