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nor Stefanik’s PAC supported the QAnon-promoting
Greene, who triumphed anyway as the lone woman
in a crowded primary field to replace retiring Repre-
sentative Tom Graves in a ruby-red northern Geor-
gia district. “We supported and worked with every
single one of the Republican women who won with
the exception of Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren
Boebert,” Conway says.
In the case of Greene, Conway adds, “not only did
we not endorse her, I actively worked against her.
It was the first time I’d worked against Republican
women because I knew what’s happening now was
going to happen. The Democrats were going to make
them our AOCs,” referring to Alexandria Ocasio-Cor-
tez, the outspoken New York progressive.Driving in the Right Lane
greene and boebert are outliers in their
stridency and tendency toward harsh rhetoric as
well as in some of their more far-right views. But
overall, the slate of new Republican women in the
House is a mostly conservative bloc that appears,
thus far, to be in near lockstep with male leaders
who push adherence to the party line and, for that
matter, with most of the GOP women already in
Congress. Only two Republican women in the
House supported the second Trump impeachment:
Wyoming’s Liz Cheney, the No. 3-ranked Republi-
can House leader and the highest-ranking GOP
woman in Congress, who offered a withering con-
demnation of the ex-president’s culpability in incit-
ing the Capitol riot, and Representative Jaime Her-
rera Beutler of Washington. Among the first-timers,
only Young Kim, and Representatives Maria Salazar
of Florida and Nicole Malliotakis of New York vot-
ed to remove Greene from committees.
“This [behavior] should not be tolerated by eitherfrom $118,000 in 2018.
The parallel efforts by E-PAC and VIEW PAC bore
impressive fruit last November. Eleven of the 14
Republicans who won back seats that had flipped
to Democrats two years earlier were women, and a
record seven women won GOP primaries in open
seats in heavily Republican districts. That “just nev-
er happens,” Conway says, because usually there’s a
long line of male politicians who have impatient-
ly waited for an incumbent to retire. Two of those
winners, Representatives Diane Harshbarger of Ten-
nessee and Lisa McClain of Michigan, each plunged
more than $1 million of their own money into their
campaigns in order to best a crowded field of men;
Conway says candidates spending big out of their
own pockets for House races was historically largely
the province of men.
Conway worried during the campaign about
some of the more extreme candidates; neither she
“There could hardly be a WORSE TIME to
forge cohesion, but the new women
in Congress are talking AMONG THEMSELVES,
and that’s where it all starts.”