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The Double Standard for Female CandidatesIn the New Jersey governor\u2019s race, the Democratic candidate, Mikie Sherrill, is polling well. So why is there so much anxiety? The journalist Molly Jong-Fast visited her campaign and found a major disconnect between the public critique and the strong candidate she saw in person.<\/p>\n
Democrats have run women for executive positions before, and it has not worked. And so the question is: Does the electorate have problems voting for women for executive positions? \u201cThe outcome of this election is not what we wanted…\u201d During the No Kings rally, I went to Montclair, N.J., to spend a little time with a member of Congress named Mikie Sherrill. She is one of two Democratic women running for governor in the 2025 cycle. \u201cThese two races are the biggest flashing red siren signs for Republicans.\u201d Both women are polling as much as five to seven points ahead of their challengers. \u201cWe are optimistic.\u201d But I talked to a bunch of different people \u2014\u2014 \u201cFrom the great state of New Jersey.\u201d … and there is an underlying anxiety. Is this anxiety because norms and institutions are being crushed every day? \u201cDon\u2019t tell us what we\u2019re going to feel.\u201d \u201cTrump just smoked four more coke boats.\u201d \u201cI hate my opponent.\u201d Or is this anxiety because a lot of people in the Democratic Party feel that the electorate may be more sexist than we know? \u201cShe is a really shallow and uneducated person.\u201d \u201cShe is like a biracial werewolf.\u201d \u201cLike a vacuous, incompetent female vice president.\u201d When I saw Mikie Sherrill, what I was struck by was that she was actually a really great speaker, despite the fact that I had read a lot of stuff that said she wasn\u2019t as good a candidate as she clearly was when I saw her. So I thought: Wow, what I\u2019m reading in the news does not match with what I\u2019m seeing on the ground. It made me think that maybe there was some kind of anti-woman sentiment that was tainting the reporting, that was tainting the way people were seeing these candidates. And then I wondered: Is it going to trickle down to the electorate? Or no? \u201cThe race is actually tightening… \u201d \u201cNew Jersey\u2019s governor\u2019s race neck and neck.\u201d Why is this candidate who is so good on paper and so good in person, so scrutinized? \u201cAll the controversies that have plagued Mikie Sherrill\u2019s campaign.\u201d \u201cDemocrat Mikie Sherrill may be caught in another scandal…\u201d \u201cWe were talking off camera about why this is even brought up, why she didn\u2019t walk in her graduation.\u201d it struck me as sexism. \u201cWhat he always says is \u2018you got to beat this [pause].\u2019\u201d These two women… \u201cWe\u2019re going to win.\u201d are then put in a position where everything is really resting on them. They sort of have to overperform because if they don\u2019t, then Trump will take this as some kind of belief that he can do more of the kind of destruction he\u2019s doing on the federal government. And I think that the fact that these two women are being scrutinized like this is pretty much where women are right now in American politics. They are being held up to standards that men are not.<\/p>\n
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In the New Jersey governor\u2019s race, the Democratic candidate, Mikie Sherrill, is polling well. So why is there so much anxiety? The journalist Molly Jong-Fast visited her campaign and found a major disconnect between the public critique and the strong candidate she saw in person.<\/p>\n
By Molly Jong-Fast and Ingrid Holmquist<\/p>\n
November 2, 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"new video loaded: The Double Standard for Female Candidates transcript Back transcript The Double Standard for Female CandidatesIn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":25916,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[16471,3677,16470,1066,9,11,10,87,7782,16472],"class_list":["post-25915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-discrimination","tag-governors","tag-gubernatorial-races","tag-new-jersey","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-politics","tag-polls","tag-women-and-girls"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25915"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25915\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}