Wilson is an associate professor of political science at the University of Indianapolis and a public voices fellow at The OpEd Project.
Start your engines, organize your campaign and submit your filing paperwork, ladies, because now is the time to run. Women are critically underrepresented in government, regardless of the level or branch.
We are mere months away from the congressional midterm elections, which gives us the opportunity to vote on federal races, but there are many statewide elections that coincide with the Senate and House candidates at the top of the ticket. Even with the presidency not up for election this year, the Covid pandemic, rampant inflation, and Russia’s involvement in Ukraine give voters plenty of motivation to get to the polls.
Female candidates should be motivated, too. The last two election cycles marked record-breaking numbers of women running for office and ultimately winning. Research in political science (like the work of Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox) shows that when women run, they win — but they do not run as often as men do. This disparity in declaring candidacies leads to the gender gap in politics.
Women are substantially underrepresented. At the federal level, women account for just 27 percent of members of Congress and are one-third of the Supreme Court. Though we have our first female (and person of color) vice president, our country still has never elected a female president. State government fares somewhat better in terms of women in public office, with 30 percent of state legislative seats occupied by women and nine states having female governors. Some politicians begin their careers in state government and then climb to the federal level, giving hope to the difference that could serve as a pipeline.
If these numbers alone are unconvincing in the need to cultivate more diversity in public office, the statistics only get worse when racial and ethnic differences are added. Women of color comprise a much smaller subset of elected officials. According to the Center for American Women in Poltics at Rutgers University, there are three women of color currently serving in the Senate (and five ever historically), one woman of color is governor of her state (Michelle Lujan Grisham, the first Latina to hold that office) while four hold the office of lieutenant governor. A record-breaking number of women of color ran in 2020 and projections based on candidate declarations show that record will again be broken in 2022. But the disparity still remains.
This gap is often the topic of conversation immediately before and following the election itself. While there is never a bad time to analyze underrepresentation and consider the causes and consequences, nothing can be done then about attracting more candidates. Candidates need to file with their elections manager (usually the secretary of state) by their state deadline in order to be listed on the ballot. Write-in candidacies do not require filing but they are largely unsuccessful. Filing opened up across the country this month and the window to declare a candidacy is slowly closing, with most state deadlines set for February and March.
To file, a prospective candidate must meet state qualifications (usually including age minimums and residency requirements), organize a campaign committee (notably a campaign finance chair who will need to navigate complex but critical laws), and, in some cases, pay a filing fee. These fees were used historically as a way to deter candidates who weren’t serious in their pursuits, though “indigent” candidates who cannot afford the fee can collect signatures as dictated by state law to forgo the financial barrier.
Traditionally, parties and political organizations led the charge and still play a large role in the recruitment, training and campaign organizing for candidates. In an era of candidate-centered elections and where primaries, not conventions, select the names that will be on the ballot in November, prospective candidates should consider running, regardless of whether they are approached or groomed by a party. Waiting to be tapped on the shoulder is not going to cut it. If you are thinking about running, you can start by yourself.
In most arenas of public service, women are the minority. And, despite two great record-breaking cycles leading up to this election, they remain the minority. From a symbolic representation perspective, this can be harmful. But it is even more damaging when considering substantive representation, where differences of experience and perspective can have on an actual impact on policies. Research has shown that women contribute in different ways than their male counterparts, confirming the value of their presence in leadership. Having institutions that resemble the people they represent is essential to an effective democracy.
If our democratic institutions do not reflect their own constituencies, one has to question the extent to which they are truly democratic with regards to representation. After all, a government “of the people, by the people, for the people” must include the people who aren’t men.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivers a keynote speech at the 62nd Munich Security Conference on Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026, in Munich, Germany.
Marco Rubio is the only adult left in the room
Finally free from the demands of being chief archivist of the United States, secretary of state, national security adviser and unofficial viceroy of Venezuela, Marco Rubio made his way to the Munich Security Conference last weekend to deliver a major address.
I shouldn’t make fun. Rubio, unlike so many major figures in this administration, is a bona fide serious person. Indeed, that’s why President Trump keeps piling responsibilities on him. Rubio knows what he’s talking about and cares about policy. He is hardly a free agent; Trump is still president after all. But in an administration full of people willing to act like social media trolls, Rubio stands out for being serious. And I welcome that.
But just because Rubio made a serious argument, that doesn’t mean it was wholly persuasive. Part of his goal was to repair some of the damage done by his boss, who not long ago threatened to blow up the North Atlantic alliance by snatching Greenland away from Denmark. Rubio’s conciliatory language was welcome, but it hardly set things right.
Whether it was his intent or not, Rubio had more success in offering a contrast with Vice President JD Vance, who used the Munich conference last year as a platform to insult allies and provide fan service to his followers on X. Rubio’s speech was the one Vance should have given, if the goal was to offer a serious argument about Trump’s “vision” for the Western alliance. I put “vision” in scare quotes because it’s unclear to me that Trump actually has one, but the broader MAGA crowd is desperate to construct a coherent theory of their case.
So what’s that case? That Western Civilization is a real thing, America is not only part of it but also its leader, and it will do the hard things required to fix it.
In Rubio’s story, America and Europe embraced policies in the 1990s that amounted to the “managed decline” of the West. European governments were free riders on America’s military might and allowed their defense capabilities to atrophy as they funded bloated welfare states and inefficient regulatory regimes. Free trade, mass migration and an infatuation with “the rules-based global order” eroded national sovereignty, undermined the “cohesion of our societies” and fueled the “de-industrialization” of our economies. The remedy for these things? Reversing course on those policies and embracing the hard reality that strength and power drive events on the global stage.
“The fundamental question we must answer at the outset is what exactly are we defending,” Rubio said, “because armies do not fight for abstractions. Armies fight for a people; armies fight for a nation. Armies fight for a way of life.”
I agree with some of this — to a point. And, honestly, given how refreshing it is to hear a grown-up argument from this administration, it feels churlish to quibble.
But, for starters, the simple fact is that Western Civilization is an abstraction, and so are nations and peoples. And that’s fine. Abstractions — like love, patriotism, moral principles, justice — are really important. Our “way of life” is largely defined and understood through abstractions: freedom, the American dream, democracy, etc. What is the “Great” in Make America Great Again, if not an abstraction?
This is important because the administration’s defenders ridicule or dismiss any principled objection critics raise as fastidious gitchy-goo eggheadery. Trump tramples the rule of law, pardons cronies, tries to steal an election and violates free market principles willy-nilly. And if you complain, it’s because you’re a goody-goody fool.
As White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said not long ago, “we live in a world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” Rubio said it better, but it’s the same idea.
There are other problems with Rubio’s story. At the start of the 1990s, the EU’s economy was 9% bigger than ours. In 2025 we were nearly twice as rich as Europe. If Europe was “ripping us off,” they have a funny way of showing it. America hasn’t “deindustrialized.” The manufacturing sector has grown during all of this decline, though not as much as the service sector, where we are a behemoth. We have shed manufacturing jobs, but that has more to do with automation than immigration. Moreover, the trends Rubio describes are not unique to America. Manufacturing tends to shrink as countries get richer.
That’s an important point because Rubio, like his boss, blames all of our economic problems on bad politicians and pretends that good politicians can fix them through sheer force of will.
I think Rubio is wrong, but I salute him for making his case seriously.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.