Interviews with Texas Republican female consultants, lobbyists, activists and aspiring politicians reveal a common sentiment: They no longer feel welcome in their own party.
For many female Texans working in Republican politics, last month’s release of a video showing GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump boasting about groping women was bad enough. They have since watched in astonishment as male elected officials from their own state have engaged in coarse rhetoric of their own.
The simmer turned into a full rolling boil on Tuesday, when someone using state Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller’s Twitter account used a four-letter word that is frequently described as “the worst word in the English language.”
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Harris, for instance, fashioned herself as a female “Alex P. Keaton,” the iconic teenaged conservative character from the 1980s sitcom Family Ties. But these days, while she does not see herself switching parties, she considers herself “more and more independent.”
She and these other women fit the ideological profile of traditional conservatism. But their alienation has culminated into votes this year for Evan McMullin, an independent presidential candidate with a GOP pedigree; writing in other names on the ballot; or even casting ballots for Hillary Clinton, a woman they grew up reviling.
“There’s a common thought process right now with young Republican women, and that is, ‘Is this the party for us?’” asked Randan Steinhauser, a member of the State Republican Executive Committee, the governing body of the Republican Party of Texas, and a prominent school choice activist in Austin.
In recent weeks, the most outspoken Republican woman in Texas politics has been Jenifer Sarver, a fixture in both Washington and Austin Republican circles dating back to her time serving in the George W. Bush administration and a Republican staffer in the U.S. Senate.
She pinned the blame for the current change in tone on the Republican primary voters who nominated him.
“He’s a disgrace and an embarrassment and has easily coasted into office,” she wrote of Miller in an email. “His use of the ‘c’ word says more about the GOP primary voters in Texas than it does about him.”
“He is vulgar and offensive and revels in being so,” she added. “I’ve always felt pride in being from a state that supports and nurtures strong women, but this new wave of openly sexist attitudes perpetrated by Texas GOP leaders is disheartening and shameful, and I worry about the message it sends to the little girls in my life.”
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After a rash of Trump-esque behavior in Texas politics, some GOP women say they've had enough. Read @TexasTribAbby: https://t.co/vdeufZF6yL
— Patrick Svitek (@PatrickSvitek) November 4, 2016
God bless TX ladies like @RandanMarie (who I know from DeMint days) for speaking out against nasty Trump influences https://t.co/x5yoqmHaPS
— Amanda Carpenter (@amandacarpenter) November 4, 2016
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