GOP Women Endangered

The Rocky today picks up on the theme, which we reported last week here, of the disappearing Republican woman legislator in Colorado, which many blame on the rightward march of the Party.

“Republican women aren’t on the endangered species list just yet,” reports the Rocky, but it’s getting close,  pointing out that only six out of 47 Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate are women, and four of them won’t be back next year. Three out of four Republican women who ran in contested primary battles lost to men, including Kiki Traylor.

“That someone as conservative as Kiki Traylor can lose in the primary because she’s not conservative enough tells you everything,” House Majority Leader Alice Madden told the newspaper.Meanwhile, the number of Democratic legislators is up.

Not reported by the Rocky are the statistics on who is running for office, which are also stark. In 1986, out of a total of 48 women running for the legislature, half were Republicans. In 2006, 73 percent of the 66 female legislative candidates are Democratic women, according to figures compiled by Colorado State University professor John Straayer.

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