Women in Politics Unnerve Some Men

Before he first debated Susan Molinari, House candidate Bob Gigante received this warning from campaign consultants: “Whatever you do, don’t make her cry.”

Running against a woman can be a delicate business. Just ask George Bush.

“Remember 1984? I can’t forget it!” Bush said recently of the presidential campaign in which Democrat Geraldine Ferraro ran against him for vice president.

The subject arose after Clayton Williams, the Republican nominee for governor of Texas, said he’d rather have state Atty. Gen. Jim Mattox as his opponent than Ann Richards, the state treasurer.

“I wouldn’t be as comfortable in battling with a woman,” Williams was quoted as saying before Richards captured the Democratic nomination in the runoff election against Mattox last week.

The political landscape is strewn with faux pas committed by men--mostly older men.

“The men are nervous,” said Celinda Lake, a pollster for the Democrats. “Women running is just plain different, and men sense it.”

Bush got himself in trouble in 1984 by saying, after debating Ferraro, that he had “kicked a little ass.” Later, Mississippi agriculture commissioner Jim Buck Ross asked Ferraro if she could bake blueberry muffins. “Yes. Can you?” she replied.

Men told women in Wisconsin and New Hampshire that they shouldn’t be running for Congress because they had young children. One of the candidates, Sen. Gordon Humphrey (R-N.H.) later apologized and said his statement had been “just plain stupid.”

“There are some things you just don’t do. I think you have to be a little bit more chivalric, if that’s the right word,” said Atty. Gen. John K. Van de Kamp, who is running for the Democratic nomination for governor of California against Dianne Feinstein, former mayor of San Francisco.

Van de Kamp promised not to punch his opponent in the nose, but he has taken a few verbal swings at her. One of his ads ends with: “Dianne Feinstein--if she couldn’t manage a city, how could she manage California?”

Martha Layne Collins, on the other hand, was elected governor of Kentucky in 1983 “in part because her opponents never could figure out how to run against her. They never did point out anything wrong with her,” said Democratic pollster Harrison Hickman.

“Lesson No. 1 about running against a woman is if it walks like a candidate and talks like a candidate, you treat it like a candidate,” added Hickman, whose clients include Van de Kamp and Sen. Paul Simon (D-Ill.), who is trying to fend off a GOP challenge from Rep. Lynn Martin.

Women such as Martin and Richards, who have hired two of the hardest-hitting media consultants in the business, are making it easier for male opponents to attack them by proving that they can be as aggressive as the next guy.

They also are coming up with some deft responses to gender-related gaffes, such as Ferraro’s comeback to Ross’s blueberry-muffin question. Richards came up with a good one-liner after Williams, a self-styled symbol of Texas machismo --confessed that he wouldn’t relish running against her. “Even cowboys get the blues,” she said.

Williams, 58, has been blue indeed since he was heard comparing the bad weather at his ranch to a rape situation. “If it’s inevitable, just relax and enjoy it,” he said. The remark last month stirred up a furor, and Williams eventually apologized “from the bottom of my heart.”

Stone attributed Williams’ attitude to his age and upbringing. “His lexicon hasn’t caught up with the times yet,” she said.

But while men of Williams’ age may not be used to competing with women, many younger candidates such as Gigante, 41, consider it perfectly normal. Gigante, a New York Democrat with four children and a working wife, was surprised by his coaches’ advice.

“Why would she cry?” Gigante asked. “She’s a mature woman. She’s held office. She wasn’t going to cry when I attacked her on an issue, just like I wasn’t going to cry if she attacked me.”

Molinari did not cry. She won the election and is serving as a congresswoman from Staten Island.