The Matrimonial Connection: The Nomination of Congressmen's Widows for the House of Representatives

Gertzog, Irwin N.

doi:10.2307/2130554

Cited by 12 publications

(21 citation statements)

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“…Many previous considerations of the widow eff e c t , including Gertzog (1980Gertzog ( , 1995 have defined widows loosely. This study considers only widows under the strict definition of the word, meaning a wife of a deceased congressman, rather than female relatives such as daughters and nieces.…”

Section: Hypotheses Methods and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although widows break through the initial structural barriers to Congress, it could still be the case that many widows are temporary placeholders for the party until a suitable candidate can be identified (Gertzog 1980;Carroll 1985b). This would manifest itself if many of the widows run in the special election to replace their husbands, but shortly thereafter step aside to allow a different candidate from the same party to take the seat.…”

Section: Theoretical Foundationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This is included in the model as a simple dummy variable to control for any ways that the South might be different from the rest of the country. The inclusion of this variable stems from the findings of Gertzog (1980), which show that the other realities in widow succession were heavily influenced by whether the husband and wife represented southern districts or states. Widows from the South are expected to run unopposed much more often than are widows in the non-southern states, because of traditional Democratic dominance there.…”

Section: H 2 : Southernmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This case is not isolated-a non-trivial number of women that have served in the U.S. Congress were first seated this way-Representatives Mary Bono (R-CA), Jo Ann Emerson (R-MO), and Lois Capps (D-CA) are other recent examples. Gertzog (1980Gertzog ( : 1995 attempted to tackle what he called the "matrimonial connection." Here we rely to some extent on the observations made by Gertzog and others in the formulation of hypotheses; but as well as providing an update, this study differs in two major aspects from the Gertzog piece.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Entrance of Women to the U.S. Congress: The Widow Effect

Solowiej

Brunell

2003

Political Research Quarterly

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This article explores what is perhaps the single most important method of entrance into Congress for women—replacing a deceased husband. As was evident with the death of Governor Mel Carnahan (D-MO) and his wife, Jean Carnahan (D-MO), who subsequently served in the Senate, the succession of dead congressmen by their widows has been treated popularly by the news media, but has not received too much scholarly attention. In this study we examine the dramatic differences between widows and non-widow females and find that the groups differ in statistically significant ways in terms of their characteristics, their length in office, and their manner of leaving office. We also look at the difference between southern widows and non-southern widows and find support for the theory that widows from the South are more likely to serve short terms—act as stand-ins—until the party can determine who the more traditional candidate ought to be. We theorize that widows are apt to run for these seats because they enjoy high name recognition, which makes running in an election less risky. This, as Bledsoe and Herring (1990) demonstrate, increases the likelihood for women to run for office. We model widow succession in terms of the theoretical basis for the widow effect and find that the more senior a House member is before he dies, the more likely the widow is to serve in his place.

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Section: Hypotheses Methods and Datamentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Theoretical Foundationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: H 2 : Southernmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Entrance of Women to the U.S. Congress: The Widow Effect

Solowiej

Brunell

2003

Political Research Quarterly

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“…Until 1976, half of the women who had served in Congress were related to a former male member. Gertzog (1980) notes that widows as successors were more likely to follow men who had served in leadership positions. By the late 1990s, one third of female members, but only one tenth of the men, were dynastic (Dal Bó, Dal Bó and Snyder, 2009), and daughters and other relations have become more common.…”

Section: Existing Evidencementioning

confidence: 99%

Gender and Dynastic Political Recruitment

2017

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