The election of Republican Kelly Ayotte as New Hampshire's governor means 13 women will serve as a state's chief executive next year, breaking the record of 12 set after the 2022 elections.
Governors hold powerful sway in American politics, shaping state policy and often using the experience and profile gained to launch campaigns for higher offices.
"It matters to have women in those roles to normalize the image of women in political leadership and even more specifically in executive leadership, where they’re the sole leader, not just a member of a team," said Kelly Dittmar, director of research at the Rutgers Center for American Women and Politics.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer was floated as a potential Democratic nominee for president after President Joe Biden exited the race. Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem was thought to be in the running for President-elect Donald Trump's vice presidential post.
Ayotte, a former U.S. senator, defeated the Democratic nominee Joyce Craig, a former mayor of Manchester, New Hampshire’s largest city.
Still, 18 states have never had a woman in the governor’s office.
"This is another side of political leadership where women continue to be underrepresented," Dittmar said. "Thirteen out of 50 is still underrepresentation."
With two women vying for governor in New Hampshire, a new record for female governors was inevitable. The state has a long history of electing women. As a senator, Ayotte was part of the nation’s first all-female congressional delegation. It was also the first state to have a female governor, state Senate president and House speaker at the same time, and the first to have a female majority in its Senate. Ayotte will be the state's third woman to be governor.
"Being a woman isn’t really that critical to her political persona," Linda Fowler, professor emerita of government at Dartmouth College, said of Ayotte.
Both Ayotte and Craig said their gender hasn’t come up on the campaign trail although reproductive rights often took front and center.
FILE - Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer delivers her State of the State address to a joint session of the House and Senate at the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan, Jan. 25, 2023.
In her campaign, Craig attacked Ayotte’s record on abortion, and both candidates released TV ads detailing their own miscarriages. Ayotte said she will veto any bill further restricting abortion in New Hampshire where it is illegal after 24 weeks of pregnancy.
When Ayotte is sworn in, five Republican women will serve as governor at the same time, another new high. The other eight are Democrats.
New Hampshire's was one of the few competitive gubernatorial races among the 11 this year. More inroads or setbacks for women’s representation could come in 2026 when 36 states will elect governors.Most voters tend to cast their ballots based on party loyalty and ideology rather than gender, Dittmar said. However, she noted female candidates often face layers of scrutiny that male counterparts largely avoid, with voters judging such things as a woman's intelligence, appearance and even dating history with a sharper lens.
The small gain for women in governor’s offices comes as Vice President Kamala Harris failed in her effort to become the first female president.
"I would not suggest to you that Kamala Harris lost a race because she was a woman, because she was a Black and South Asian woman," Dittmar said. "We would also fail to tell the correct story if we didn’t acknowledge the ways in which both gender and race shapes the campaign overall, and also had a direct effect on how Kamala Harris was evaluated by voters, treated by her opponents and even in the media and other spaces."
Executive roles, especially the presidency with its associations like commander in chief, often carry masculine stereotypes that women must work harder to overcome, Dittmar said.
Experts say women confront these perceptions more acutely in executive races, such as for governor and president, than in state legislatures, where women are making historic strides as leaders, filling roles such as speaker and committee chairs.
"Sexism, racism, misogyny, it’s never the silver bullet. It’s never why one voter acts one way or another," said Erin Vilardi, CEO of Vote Run Lead, a left-leaning group that supports women running for state legislatures. "But we have so much of that built in to how we see a leader."