Six women announce for White House race

Five politicians and Oprah Winfrey adviser to run for 2020 Democratic nomination; they join a group of five male candidates

A record number of six women are seeking the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Four are US senators: Kirsten Gillibrand, 52, of New York; Kamala Harris, 54, of California; Amy Klobuchar, 58, of Minnesota; and Elizabeth Warren, 69, of Massachusetts. Tulsi Gabbard, 37, is a member of the House of Representatives from Hawaii and an Iraq War veteran. The non-politician is Marianne Williamson, 66, an author and spiritual adviser to TV personality Oprah Winfrey.

In the November 2018 congressional elections, a record 36 women won their first seats in the House of Representatives. Most of them replaced men who held seats. They joined 66 female incumbents who were re-elected to the House.

"Likeability is more important for women candidates over men. Voters will support a man that they don't like if they believe he's qualified, but they'll only support a woman who they believe is qualified and that they like. Likeability is critical for women to be able to lead in an election," Amanda Hunter, director of research and communications at the Barbara Lee Family Foundation, which supports women in politics, told China Daily.

The women join a group of five men who have announced they will run for the Democratic presidential nomination: US Senator Cory Booker, 49, a former mayor of Newark, New Jersey; Pete Buttigieg, 37, an openly gay millennial and Navy veteran; Julian Castro, 44, a former secretary of Housing and Urban Development in the Obama administration; Richard Ojeda, 48, a former West Virginia State Senator; and John Delaney, 55, a former congressman from Maryland.

None of the six women are at the top of polls for the nomination.

According to Dana Brown, an assistant professor of political science at the Center for Women and Politics at Pennsylvania's Chatham University, "There does seem to be effort, at least by Kirsten Gillibrand to differentiate herself in a way from some of the other women candidates. She's trying to identify feminist issues and using that language. I'm not sure Amy Klobuchar and Kamala Harris and Senator Warren would do that, at least not yet."

Kathleen Dolan, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin told China Daily: "Warren is clearly going for the populist, farther left, space. Klobuchar appears to have decided that competence and caring about people will be her message. Gillibrand will probably identify most clearly with women's issues and concerns, given her past work on sexual harassment and sexual assault in the military. Harris has a focus on the criminal justice system as part of her past as an attorney general. Gabbard is a military vet and rather conservative on foreign policy issues for most Democrats, which may be a challenge for her."

US President Donald Trump didn't poll well with women during the 2016 election campaign. A CNN/ORC poll in March 2016 showed 73 percent of female voters had a negative view of Trump. However, 47 percent of all college-educated white women voted for him in the election.