The election of Republican Kelly Ayotte as New Hampshire's governor means 13 women will serve as a state's chief executive next year, breaking the record of 12 set after the 2022 elections.
Governors hold powerful sway in American politics, shaping state policy and often using the experience and profile gained to launch campaigns for higher offices.
“It matters to have women in those roles to normalize the image of women in political leadership and even more specifically in executive leadership, where they’re the sole leader, not just a member of a team,” said Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was floated as a potential Democratic nominee for president after President Biden exited the race. Republican South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem was thought to be in the running for President-elect Donald Trump's vice presidential post.
Ayotte, a former U.S. senator, defeated the Democratic nominee Joyce Craig, a former mayor of Manchester, New Hampshire’s largest city.
Still, 18 states have never had a woman in the governor’s office.
“This is another side of political leadership where women continue to be underrepresented,” Dittmar said. “Thirteen out of 50 is still underrepresentation.”
With two women vying for governor in New Hampshire, a new record for female governors was inevitable. The state has a long history of electing women. As a senator, Ayotte was part of the nation’s first all-female congressional delegation. It was also the first state to have a female governor, state Senate president and House speaker at the same time, and the first to have a female majority in its Senate. Ayotte will be the state's third woman to be governor.
“Being a woman isn’t really that critical to her political persona,” Linda Fowler, professor emerita of government at Dartmouth College, said of Ayotte.
Both Ayotte and Craig said their gender hasn’t come up on the campaign trail although reproductive rights often took front and center.
In her campaign, Craig attacked Ayotte’s record on abortion, and both candidates released TV ads detailing their own miscarriages. Ayotte said she will veto any bill further restricting abortion in New Hampshire where it is illegal after 24 weeks of pregnancy.
When Ayotte is sworn in, five Republican women will serve as governor at the same time, another new high. The other eight are Democrats.
New Hampshire's was one of the few competitive gubernatorial races among the 11 this year. More inroads or setbacks for women’s representation could come in 2026 when 36 states will elect governors.
Most voters tend to cast their ballots based on party loyalty and ideology rather than gender, Dittmar said. However, she noted female candidates often face layers of scrutiny that male counterparts largely avoid, with voters judging such things as a woman's intelligence, appearance and even dating history with a sharper lens.
The small gain for women in governor’s offices comes as Vice President Kamala Harris failed in her effort to become the first female president.
“I would not suggest to you that Kamala Harris lost a race because she was a woman, because she was a Black and South Asian woman,” Dittmar said. “We would also fail to tell the correct story if we didn’t acknowledge the ways in which both gender and race shapes the campaign overall, and also had a direct effect on how Kamala Harris was evaluated by voters, treated by her opponents and even in the media and other spaces.”
Executive roles, especially the presidency with its associations like commander in chief, often carry masculine stereotypes that women must work harder to overcome, Dittmar said.
Experts say women confront these perceptions more acutely in executive races, such as for governor and president, than in state legislatures, where women are making historic strides as leaders, filling roles such as speaker and committee chairs.
“Sexism, racism, misogyny, it’s never the silver bullet. It’s never why one voter acts one way or another,” said Erin Vilardi, CEO of Vote Run Lead Action, a left-leaning nonpartisan group that supports women running for state legislatures. “But we have so much of that built in to how we see a leader.”
Volmert reported from Lansing, Michigan, and Govindarao reported from Phoenix. Associated Press writer Holly Ramer in New Hampshire contributed to this report.
The Associated Press’ women in the workforce and state government coverage receives financial support from Pivotal Ventures. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
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This story has been updated to correct the name of Vote Run Lead Action.
FILE - Republican gubernatorial candidate Kelly Ayotte, who faces Democrat Joyce Craig in the November 2024 election, smiles during a visit to a local concrete coating business, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2024, in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Charles Krupa, File)
President Joe Biden on Thursday awarded the second highest civilian medal on Liz Cheney and Bennie Thompson, leaders of the congressional investigation into the Capitol riot who Donald Trump has said should be jailed for their roles in the inquiry.
Biden awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal to 20 people in a ceremony in the East Room, including Americans who fought for marriage equality, a pioneer in treating wounded soldiers, and two of the president's longtime friends, former Sens. Ted Kaufman, D-Del., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn.
“Together, you embody the central truth: We’re a great nation because we’re a good people," he said. "Our democracy begins and ends with the duties of citizenship. That’s our work for the ages and it’s what all of you embody.”
Biden last year honored people who were involved in defending the Capitol from a mob of angry Trump supporters on Jan. 6, 2021, or who helped safeguard the will of American voters during the 2020 presidential election, when Trump tried and failed to overturn the results.
Cheney, a Republican former Wyoming congresswoman, and Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, led the House committee that investigated the insurrection. The committee's final report asserted that Trump criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the election he lost to Biden and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol. Thompson wrote that Trump “lit that fire.”
The crowd erupted in loud cheers and stood when Cheney took the stage. Biden clasped her hand and gave her the medal. The announcer said she was being given it “for putting the American people over party.”
Cheney, who lost her seat in the GOP primary in August, later said she would vote for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential race and campaigned with the Democratic nominee, raising Trump's ire. Biden has been considering whether to offer preemptive pardons to Cheney and others Trump has targeted.
Thompson also got a standing ovation.
Trump, who won the 2024 election and will take office Jan. 20, still refuses to back away from his lies about the 2020 presidential race and has said he would pardon the rioters once he is back in the White House.
During an interview with NBC's “Meet the Press,” the president-elect said that “Cheney did something that’s inexcusable, along with Thompson and the people on the un-select committee of political thugs and, you know, creeps," claiming without evidence they “deleted and destroyed” testimony they collected.
“Honestly, they should go to jail,” he said.
Cheney and Thompson were “an embarrassment to this country" for their conduct on the committee, Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung asserted.
Biden also awarded the medal to attorney Mary Bonauto, who fought to legalize same-sex marriage, and Evan Wolfson, a leader of the marriage equality movement.
Other honorees included Frank Butler, who set new standards for using tourniquets on war injuries; Diane Carlson Evans, an Army nurse during the Vietnam War who founded the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation; and Eleanor Smeal, an activist who led women's rights protests in the 1970s and fought for equal pay.
He bestowed the honor to photographer Bobby Sager, academics Thomas Vallely and Paula Wallace, and Frances Visco, the president of the National Breast Cancer Coalition.
Other former lawmakers honored included former Sen. Bill Bradley, D-N.J.; former Sen. Nancy Kassebaum, the first woman to represent Kansas; and former Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., who championed gun safety measures after her son and husband were shot to death.
After he presented the awards, he went back to the lectern to ask lawmakers in the room to stand, as well as John Kerry.
“Let's remember, our work continues," he said to the room after he thanked the families in attendance for the support they gave to the nominees. We've got a lot more work to do to keep this going.”
Biden honored four people posthumously: Joseph Galloway, a former war correspondent who wrote about the first major battle in Vietnam in the book “We Were Soldiers Once … and Young"; civil rights advocate and attorney Louis Lorenzo Redding; former Delaware judge Collins Seitz; and Mitsuye Endo Tsutsumi, who was held with other Japanese Americans during World War II and challenged the detention.
The Presidential Citizens Medal was created by President Richard Nixon in 1969 and is the country’s second highest civilian honor after the Presidential Medal of Freedom. It recognizes people who “performed exemplary deeds of service for their country or their fellow citizens.”
This combo photo shows Rep. Bennie G. Thompson, D-Miss., speaking during the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024, in Chicago, left; and Former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney speaking during a town hall with Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris at The People's Light in Malvern, Pa., Monday, Oct. 21, 2024, right. (AP Photo/Erin Hooley/Matt Rourke)
President Joe Biden makes a statement on the latest developments in New Orleans from Camp David, Md., Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2025. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
