With More of Them Running, Women Could Have Banner Year in 2012 — or Not

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The 2012 elections are likely to mark the new “year of the woman” in the Senate. Ten women — six of them incumbents — are presumed Democratic Senate nominees this year, and another is seriously considering a run. Republicans have one female senator, Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, up for re-election, and one presumed nominee, Linda Lingle of Hawaii, that state’s former governor. Other women in both parties are engaged in primary fights.

It is the greatest number of female incumbents ever up for reelection in the Senate, and among the highest number of nominees total, which could add up to a banner year for women in the deliberative — and testosterone-infused — legislative body.

But, with Democrats endangered and Republicans lagging in recruitment of women — one of their own, Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas, is retiring — it is also quite possible that in 2012, women could lose ground in the Senate for the first time in a generation.

“If it is a bad year for Democrats, it could be a bad year for women in the Senate,” said Debbie Walsh, the director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, noting that the majority of female elected officials nationwide were Democrats. “It is still early. Right now the numbers are lining up in such a way that it could go either way.”

full: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/21/us/politics/women-could-have-banner-year-in-2012-election.html