Please excuse the tardiness. Today’s ‘Cast stems from the event Jay mentioned below: it was called “Women Voters and the Right Guy.” I have to be honest and admit that before I heard about the event, I hadn’t realized that there were women in prominent public roles in all four of the major campaigns:
Jill Hazelbaker (McCain)
Katie Levinson (Giuliani)
Barbara Comstock (Romney)
Karen Hanratty (Thompson)
Comstock’s a bit of an outlier, since the other three official national spokesmen (?) whereas she’s has a more nebulous (but perhaps more powerful) role in Romney’s “inner circle.” The presence of these women in top tiers of top tier campaigns suggests that however much trouble the Republicans have reaching some women voters, they attract some impressive women staffers.
And perhaps that will be how they finally close the gender gap: the presence of more women leads to more women, as one of the panelists said. That like-attracts-like strategy may be the only one the Republicans have going for them, however, as I discuss in the cast.
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UPDATE: I should have noted that Romney’s campaign manager is a woman, Beth Myers, the only female campaign manager in the R field.