The all-female delegation that will take charge of New Hampshire on January 3 is the product of a unique political system. A flawed, but effective model for putting women in positions of power.
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"Hi! I'm your new governor!"
Maggie Hassan cheerfully introduces herself to the security guard in the corner at the newly reopened Gorham Paper Mill in northern New Hampshire. The female guard shakes her hand, a little confused. The scene repeats itself several times during the half-hour tour, with the biker guys and bearded men in plaid shirts who work the tissue-producing machines.
When she is inaugurated on January 3, Hassan will become the country's only female Democratic governor, and the chief executive of the first state to elect an all-female state delegation, consisting of returning Democratic senator Jeanne Shaheen (who was governor from 1997 to 2003), returning Republican senator Kelly Ayotte, and congressional representatives Ann McLane-Kuster and Carol Shea-Porter. Thirteen years ago, Hassan didn't even want to be in politics.
Her story — as well as those of the other four women — is a reflection of a unique political system that has inadvertently produced a watershed moment. New Hampshire has, by accident, solved a problem that all three waves of modern feminism have faced: How to put women in positions of true power and authority. McLane-Kuster says her mother, who served as a state senator, used to joke that New Hampshire politics "is women's work," but it's not entirely a joke.
In a state with an abnormally large, unpaid legislature, the ground-level civic engagement that has always been the province of stay-at-home-moms — school boards, letter-writing campaigns — becomes the work of low-rent state legislators. These positions carry less of the fanfare or pay that come with legislatures in almost any other state. But they do something else: They offer a path past a glass ceiling that, in other states, can block women with similar career paths from running for Congress from their perches on, say, school boards or community groups.
The result is hard to argue with: Women wield virtually all of the political power in the state.
"I don't know that it's the best legislature,” says Marie Wilson, founder of the White House Project, a non-profit that works to put women in positions of power. “But the one thing it does is bring in women.”
The five women holding New Hampshire's top political offices, from left, Gov.-elect Maggie Hassan, U.S. Reps.-elect Ann McLane Kuster and Carol Shea-Porter, and U.S. Sens. Kelly Ayotte and Jeanne Shaheen
Image by Jim Cole / AP
In New Hampshire, Maggie Hassan's quick ascent in politics is, you could say, a fairly typical story, though it would be unusual in many other states. "I didn't intend to run for public office," she says, sitting in the passenger seat of her staffer's dirt green Jeep. "I didn't really think about it."
In the '90s, Hassan was a successful New England lawyer with a husband and two young children. Her life was steady, but not easy: Her son Ben, now 24, suffers from cerebral palsy, which leaves him unable to speak, walk, or use his hands. It requires, as Hassan puts it, "parenting in high relief." Though she didn't consider herself political, her combined corporate attorney’s background and understanding of special needs in education turned her into an obvious advocate. Her family had a household income that allowed them to hire help with Ben, but Hassan understood that most families didn't. So in 1999, the state's first female governor, Jeanne Shaheen, asked Hassan to serve on a school funding board, where she'd represent the interests of public-school parents. In Concord, she quickly met key players in the political scene, and by 2002, she was encouraged to run for a State Senate seat when a candidate dropped out of a race last minute. She won.
At first, she was hesitant. "I got the call asking me if I'd do it,” she says. “And I called my husband. He had a job, I had a job, and I told him I didn't think I should do it, because we were too busy," she says. Hassan’s husband works as the principal of Philips Exeter Academy, a prestigious boarding school in New Hampshire. The family lives in a house owned by the school near the campus. "But he said, you know, you'd be good at this, so let's make it work," sipping her second or third Dunkin' Donuts coffee of the day. She used to order a large because it was the most "financially efficient," but has recently switched to mediums because she could never finish the whole cup.
Hassan won that race. And, without placing a crippling financial burden on her family, she was able to take on the barely-paid work, thanks in part to the unusually flexible law firm for which she worked. While Hassan was able to earn income as a state senator, such flexible yet lucrative jobs are extremely rare.
Members of New Hampshire's state senate and state legislators are virtually unpaid. It's a part-time position, which isn't uncommon — but in every other state, representatives get either an annual salary of a few thousand dollars or a per diem payment of a few hundred. In California, legislators made $95,291 a year in 2012. In New Hampshire, they make $100 a year. This, local leaders agree, has been an essential factor in getting women into office.
"Not to diminish the social accomplishment [of the all-female delegation]," says Robin Comstock, President and CEO of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, who moderated a discussion between the five elected women in early December. "Our legislators are unpaid. So they're volunteers. Some of us talk that it's interesting that women have found this place of leadership."
And most New Hampshire leaders and political insiders don't couch the subject that much: They agree, nearly universally and without much reservation, that the unpaid, volunteer nature of the legislature has historically drawn in women — particularly, women whose husbands can support the family — while discouraging men.
"It's definitely a factor. It's not highly paid," says McLane-Kuster. It was particularly true, she says, a few decades ago when her mother served as a state senator. "For a lot people, if they had to be a breadwinner in the family they couldn't afford to do it. More and more women could, because they typically had someone in their family who was in the workplace."
Hassan agrees. "The fact that a New Hampshire legislator's position is not seen as a career or a way of supporting a family has meant that it draws women," she says. "At times I think men who might be looking for a paid career have known that they couldn't make one out of serving in the legislature. So there's a little more space for women."
"It allowed a lot of women who in other states might not have a shot at being elected," says Ray Buckley, chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party. "It certainly opens doors, where it's essentially volunteer, whether it's after women have raised kids, or have retired, or for one reason or another were wealthy."
In 2012, the five elected women all had established and successful careers before seeking office; they weren't riding their husbands' political coattails. But the financial ability of women in the state to take on these elected roles has been essential in paving the way for all the record-breaking of the past decade or so.
“The first generation of women in politics were widows of politicians, and the next generation were wives and daughters,” says McLane-Kuster. “In this group, it's very apparent that three of us are lawyers, one was a teacher, and one was a social worker. We're working mothers. We’re the next generation."
Of the five elected women, only two — Hassan and Shaheen — previously served in the state senate or legislature. Before she was Senator, Ayotte was the state's appointed attorney general, while McLane-Kuster was a lobbyist in the state house. Shea-Porter, a former social worker, reportedly decided to run after working as a volunteer in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina.
The current delegation may not have paved the road, but they have broken the records. Shaheen is the first woman to ever serve as both a governor and a senator. In 1999, New Hampshire became the first state to concurrently have a female as governor, Senate president, and state House speaker. And in 2008, the 24-person state Senate became the first majority female legislative body in the country, with 13 women and 11 men.
Those accomplishments — and the ones of the current delegation — are the products of a state that has long embraced and allowed women to participate in government in an unprecedented way. "The women rising to the top of the legislature in the '70s, '80s and '90s really set the stage for the successes of the women in the last decade," Buckley says.
The unpaid nature of the state legislature definitely opened more spots to women, but the abnormally huge number of seats is also highly important. In a state of just 1.3 million people, there are 400 seats in the House and 24 in the Senate. That means roughly in one every 3,000 people is a state senator or representative. By contrast, Pennsylvania has the second most State Representatives, and they only have 203. They also have twelve and a half million people. California, which has a population of 37 million, has just 80 seats in its House.
