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By Root 912 0

something at stake. Still, the labeling of women candidates as “one issue” candidates infuriated me. I knew that what provoked most of these women was the perceived lack of representation in the federal government—not, as was suggested, the specific issue of sexual harassment alone. This bit of manipulation of political rhetoric was nothing more than an attempt to limit the relevance of the women against whom it was directed. The labeling in the campaigns recognized the threat of their broad-based support and attempted to neutralize that support by narrowing their field of focus. Once the label convinced voters of the candidate’s limitation, her opponent had convinced the voter that she had little potential for effectiveness on other issues. The “single-issue candidate” label can be likened to the old saw “A woman’s place is in the home.” If you can convince people of that, then you can exclude women from workplaces. Similarly, if you can convince voters that a candidate is interested in only one issue, you can convince them that they would not take care of the other issues of concern to the voter.

Interestingly, I have never heard the term used to attack a man. It lends itself more readily to women candidates probably because it plays to the perception that women are not effective leaders. For example, I have never heard of a campaign against a male member of a minority group which dubbed him a one-issue candidate. I have not heard attempts to limit effectiveness of minority candidates by similar insinuations that they are only concerned about minority people. There are two reasons for that. One is that the fear of broad-based support for men of color does not exist as it did for women who ran in 1992. A second is that the gap between the social perceptions of leadership abilities of men and women is larger than that of white men and minority men. Yet the condescending attitude toward women candidates persists despite women’s proven leadership, and their detractors continue to persuade voters in that manner. Finally, as a society we have become better adept at deciphering veiled racist terms than we have at deciphering veiled sexist terms.

Despite my enthusiasm for the candidates, I declined all invitations to campaign. As a practical matter, I did not have time. My full-time teaching and administrative responsibilities in the spring of 1992, coupled with speaking on sexual harassment, left no time for political campaigning. But there was another reason I avoided politics, though I liked many of the political candidates. I dislike and distrust politics. I dislike what I see as its game playing and empty rhetoric. And despite the fact that the women running and their platforms addressed the shortcomings of current representation, I knew that they were necessarily a part of a political system.

I dislike rallies and political speeches. Thus, when Ron Brown, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, asked me to speak at the Democratic National Convention, I declined. I had always been a registered Democrat and I preferred the Democratic Party over the Republican Party. Nevertheless, the party had done little to show any real concern about the issue of sexual harassment. George Mitchell, the Democratic leader of the Senate, did little to assist me before and nothing since the hearing. Moreover, there was no clear statement from leadership denouncing the alleged behavior of one of its former members, Brock Adams, who resigned his Senate seat following allegations by an aide, Kari Tupper, of sexual assault. A bold statement of zero tolerance of the kind of behavior alleged would have gone a long way to express the commitment to ending sexual abuse in the Senate. George Mitchell never issued such a statement. The silver lining behind Adams’ dark cloud is that Patti Murray ran for and won that vacated seat in 1992. When approached by Brown, I was too disillusioned with politics to participate in organized political efforts. My participation in the process would only inflame the people who had attacked me during the hearing.