Republican men say so....

Why aren’t more Republican women in Congress?

The GOP has only 13 women in the House of Representatives. Rebecca Schuller is trying to change that.

By ZACK STANTON

You cannot fix a problem without first admitting that it exists. In recovery, they call this “Step One,” the beginning of a long and challenging process of improvement.

And at this moment — with a massive gender gap in polls and the number of Republican women in the House at its lowest level in a quarter-century — some in the GOP are ready to take that first step and admit that the party has a problem when it comes to electing women and attracting their support at the ballot box.

Others are not.

“There’s been a disconnect with women for quite a while,” said Rebecca Schuller, the executive director of Winning For Women, an advocacy organization dedicated to electing more Republican women to Congress. “When I see the number of women in the House, sure, that’s disturbing.”

After the 2018 midterm elections, the number of GOP congresswomen dropped from 22 to 13 — what Schuller described in an interview for POLITICO’s Women Rule podcast as a “wake-up call for us to really see the need for this organization.”

Originally formed in 2017, Winning for Women supports Republican women interested in running for Congress, often working with them at the earliest stages of their campaigns to boost their fundraising numbers and help provide the guidance and training that inexperienced candidates often lack.

“One of the things that we try to do … is [make] sure that women understand that they don’t have to wait their turn, that the safety net is out there, the resources are there,” said Schuller. “If they want to jump in — if they want to make this crazy decision to put their entire lives in front of the public and be scrutinized … they’re going to have what they need.”

But precisely what do they need? The answer depends on what, exactly, you see as the problem — something that Schuller thinks is sometimes misdiagnosed.

“I don’t necessarily think it’s a pipeline issue in that we’re seeing, really, record numbers of women jump in,” said Schuller. “Elise Stefanik chaired recruitment for the NRCC last year. I think she had 120 women running. That’s not a pipeline issue.”

Nor, says Schuller, does the problem begin and end with President Donald Trump. “The president, first and foremost, I think has been a motivator of women,” said Schuller. “Women across the board are jumping into the arena right now because they want to hear their voices heard and see their voices heard. In some of those districts, the president is going to be a real asset for them, and in [others,] he’s not—and they do exist.”

As Schuller sees it, the two big hurdles Republican women face work in tandem: a lack of resources and difficult GOP primaries.

That realization — that good candidates were being recruited and running for office but losing their primaries — propelled Winning for Women to launch a super PAC this year, which Schuller described as dedicated to “making sure that we’re getting women through those primaries.”

The first real test of that approach came earlier this month in North Carolina, where WFW Action Fund spent nearly $900,000 in a competitive primary runoff for an open House seat in a heavily Republican area. WFW’s candidate, Joan Perry, lost that race by 20 points — a result many observers saw as the latest sign that the broader Republican Party has a problem with women and is not yet willing to admit it.

“Politically, the odds have not been in favor of women, frankly really ever in our country’s history,” said Schuller.