By Emily Saks, Staff Writer
Six female congressional candidates gathered at Bryn Mawr on Thursday, September 27th for a panel discussion titled “A Seat at the Table? Pennsylvania Women Congressional Candidate Forum.” The panel included Mary Gay Scanlon (D), Chrissy Houlahan (D), Bibiana Boerio (D), Pearl Kim ’01 (R), and Madeleine Dean (D) and was intended to be a nonpartisan discussion on the topic of women in politics today.
President Kim Cassidy kicked off the event with an introduction of each candidate and spoke about the importance of women’s’ involvement in local and national politics and the topic’s relevance to the Bryn Mawr College community. Kelly Dittmar, an assistant professor of political science at Rutgers University-Camden, moderated the discussion.
Each candidate spoke about her motivation for running for office, how gender has affected her campaign so far, and what experiences and perspectives she would bring to policy making. Mary Gay Scanlon described her choice to run as a response to troubling current events. Scanlon is running in Pennsylvania’s 5th Congressional District, which includes the campuses of Haverford, Bryn Mawr, and Swarthmore, as well as all of Delaware County. Scanlon has worked as a civil rights lawyer for over 35 years, and expressed a strong desire to combat voter suppression and gerrymandering, to fight for affordable and accessible birth control and abortion, and to improve the public education system.
Chrissy Houlahan had a similar motivation for running. She explained, “I didn’t recognize our democracy [anymore], everything I’ve worried about has transpired.” Houlahan is running in Pennsylvania’s 6th Congressional District, which includes Berks and Chester counties, stretching from the edges of the Mainline to Reading. Houlahan worked as a chemistry teacher in North Philadelphia, and for several nonprofits. She is an Air Force veteran, and stressed the importance of national security and diplomacy, as well as the importance of STEM in politics.
Bibiana Boerio is running in Pennsylvania’s 14th Congressional District, which includes Washington, Fayette, and Greene counties, and parts of Westmorland County in the southwestern corner of the state. She described her decision to run by saying, “I couldn’t sit and stand by.” Boerio grew up in Latrobe, Pa. and has worked for Ford Motor Company as a financial analyst, served as an Interim President of Seton Hill University and is currently a volunteer trustee on the boards of many educational and community service organizations.
Boerio is particularly passionate about job growth, access to healthcare, and infrastructure improvements that aim to revitalize local communities. Boerio believes that finding common ground with people of diverse political beliefs and orientations is an approach that is too often missing in current politics. She explained that “we don’t talk about labels, we talk about common themes.”
Pearl Kim is a Bryn Mawr College alum and candidate in Pennsylvania’s 5th Congressional District, running against Mary Gay Scanlon. She worked for eleven years as an Assistant District Attorney, and later accepted a senior executive position in the office of Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro (D) that allowed her to focus on sexual assault on college campuses. Kim described her frustration with the rhetoric coming from the national government, saying that “certain things become politicized that should not be politicized, like sexual abuse.”
She stated that her experiences with sexual assault and her battle with cancer made her realize that she wanted to do more to inspire change, which lead her to run for office. If elected, Kim would be the first woman of color elected to Congress in Pennsylvania history.
Candidate Madeleine Dean is running in Pennsylvania’s 4th Congressional District, which includes the northwestern suburbs of Philadelphia in Montgomery and Berks counties such as King of Prussia and Conoshocken. Dean practiced law with the Philadelphia Trial Lawyers, and later served as an assistant professor of English at La Salle University for over ten years. Dean is particularly passionate about addressing gun violence, and co-founded the gun safety group PA SAFE Caucus, which is committed to reducing all types of violence in society through funding for mental health services, resources to curb effects of drug addiction, and other solutions.
At a time filled with political unrest, Bryn Mawr student Oona Ryle ‘19 said, “I think that after a day like this, it was really encouraging seeing women come together… we’re a liberal campus and we want people representing us that hold the same values as we do.”
Julia Moore ‘21, who is currently working on Houlahan’s campaign commented, “with everything that’s been going on, watching these people on stage made me feel hopeful.”
Out of the current 18 Pennsylvania congressional representatives, none of them are women. Despite their differences in backgrounds and stances on the issues, all five candidates hope to shake up the demographics of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation and increase female representation within the national government.
Photo Courtesy of WHYY
