[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC STING] - We're pleased to welcome back to our show, Debbie Wals, who's the director of the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University.

Debbie, good to see you.

- Nice to see you, Steve.

- Debbie, what is going on?

What is going on in the state legislature that we are losing so many women who are just choosing not to run again?

Yes, a few members of the assembly are running for the Senate, but that's not what I'm talking about.

What's going on?

- Well, it is a record year for women not running for reelection.

And there's a mixed story there, right?

Some of them have been serving for quite a while and they're tired and they're moving on.

Some have had some health issues.

A couple we know are not running again, Sadaf Jaffer in particular has called out misogyny and anti-Asian, anti-Muslim hate as part of why she is not running again.

- After one term.

- After one term, after one term.

And that's something we have to look at and we have to look at in a hard way not just here in New Jersey, but across the country because it's one thing to elect women to office, but it's another thing to retain them, right?

And we have to make sure that these spaces and these environments are places that women can stick around.

And this issue of racism that women seem to face and the violence that women face at higher rates than men do.

And I'm not necessarily talking about physical violence, but the kind of aggression that's displayed on social media that their families are then victims of.

And you have to take a hard look if you've got young kids do you want them exposed to that?

Do you wanna be afraid for them to go to school?

You know, people get emails that say "I know where your kids go to school."

And you know, even if they were never gonna act on it because they're sitting in their mother's basement with a Slurpee, but this is the kind of harassment and violence that we know people in politics face, but women are disproportionately impacted by this.

And we're seeing it at every level.

I mean, look at what happened to Nancy Pelosi's husband, right?

That is at it's most egregious, but it takes away from wanting to think about staying in office.

- The other part of this is we just had an interview with a leader in the Latina community who was arguing very effectively that women of color, that for Latinas it is especially difficult as well.

Largely not only the fundraising issue is challenging, raising money to run a campaign, but also that the quote unquote old boys network, if you will, the old party boss system, the county chair system, just not particularly open to women of color.

True?

- Yeah.

Steve, you and I have been talking about this, I feel like every few years I come on and we have this conversation and it doesn't change dramatically.

- We're going in the wrong direction now.

- Yeah, and our state is unique in the ways in which those county party chairs, and in some cases people who aren't even elected, who serve in position, who have positions of power that make decisions about who runs and who doesn't run.

And they are looking at people like themselves.

And these folks are largely white men.

- Older white men.

- Right, and they pick people that look like them.

They groom them, they bring them along and they run them.

And in our state, unlike most other states, the party is in effect endorsing in the primary.

And it makes it very, very difficult for new people, women, people of color, women of color in particular, to break in because those doors to money and the volunteers and the organization is not behind you when you are running off-line.

And that just makes it very- - One second, one second, Debbie.

Lemme clarify off-line.

I don't wanna get arcane here, but Debbie and I, being students of the political process, we get too inside, you know, inside baseball, if you will.

Don't worry, I don't have any other props.

- Okay.

- So the party line is given to someone by the party organization.

The line is the top line, the preferred line, off the line is often very hard to find on a ballot and very hard to win from that position.

Please pick it up from there, Debbie.

- Yeah, so if you don't have that ballot placement, but it's so much more than the ballot, right Steve?

It's also the money, it's the organization, it's the get out the vote operation.

It's, you know, most people go in to vote and they're Democrat or they're a Republican and they see who the party is endorsing, and that's their clue, right?

That's how they know who to vote for.

- Even if they don't know that person.

- Right, right.

So they may not know who's voting, I mean who's running necessarily and where they stand on everything.

But they go, "Well, this is the Democrat who's running with the party endorsement and I'm a Democrat and that's who I'm gonna vote for."

Or "This is the Republican and they've got the party endorsement and I'm a Republican."

You know, party is the greatest predictor of how you vote.

And knowing, you know you sort of assume that your party leadership on either side is doing the vetting for you.

But what the problem is is when they're doing the vetting you're not learning enough about the other people running.

And it just rules out those folks.

It makes it so much harder.

And there are exceptions.

We've seen it, but they are so rare.

- Right.

- That we all talk about them when they pull it off, right?

- Real quick on this, New Jersey used to be in the top 10 of the number of women in the state legislature.

Now we are 21st in the nation for female representation in the state legislature.

Real quick on this, explain to folks that's running for office, getting elected to office, the impact of having fewer and fewer women in the state legislature in terms of public policy, please, Debbie?

- Sure, well, I will just say for the record, we used to be in the bottom 10 for decades with states like Mississippi and Alabama and Kentucky.

And then things changed.

People, honestly, Steve, people got indicted, people got thrown out, and party chairs looked to women and they put women in in those spots.

- They were men who got indicted, men who got- - Men who got indicted.

It was men who got the boot.

And women came in and took their place.

And we moved up and we did for a brief period, we were in the top 10 or top 15, we're now down to 21st.

It matters because women bring, and women, women of color bring different perspectives to the table, different life experiences, and they legislate differently.

They have different public policy priorities.

It is not for nothing that in New Jersey, we were for a long time, one of only two states with paid family medical leave.

And that was because of Loretta Weinberg, right?

Because a woman - Senator Weinberg.

- was there who said "This is a problem."

The fact that a woman who has a baby is not thrown out of the hospital after 24 hours.

They have no more drive-by deliveries.

That was women in the state of New Jersey.

- Or excuse me, Debbie, state Senator Teresa Ruiz leading the effort as it relates to affordable, accessible childcare.

Example, if you will, our Reimagine childcare initiative that could happen with a male legislator, but it hasn't.

- No, because you know what happens?

It's women who understand and raise it up.

It's not that the men don't support it, but Teresa Ruiz has been, is an extraordinary example of someone who has prioritized education.

- That's right.

- And kids in a way that it's not, again, it's not that the men in the legislature don't care about education, don't care about kids, but will they make that a top priority?

I mean, she has been such a leader on that.

So it takes women's voices and it takes a diversity of women's voices.

So white women, black women, Latinas, Asian-American women, Muslim women, you know, it takes those different voices.

And honestly it's why we want diversity overall in our legislature.

- Debbie, I'm sorry for cutting you off there and unfortunately there is time issue.

Debbie Walsh joins us again to put things in perspective.

Debbie is the director of the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University.

Debbie, thank you so much.

We appreciate it.

- Thanks so much, Steve.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we'll be right back.

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