Women — and the men who them — can elect a president in 2024 who will protect our Constitution and treasured freedoms. She happens to be a woman. It is time.
Forty years ago, Maureen Reagan, our dear friend Judy Miller and I, tackled the gender gap to re-elect President Ronald Reagan, believing the party of “less government” and “individual responsibility” should remove social issues from its platform and women for elected office. In the 1983 election campaign, we organized some of the first “video conferences” live events in Seattle, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C.
When George H.W. Bush became the nominee in 1988, we wore buttons at the convention highlighting the gender gap — “10 Million Votes!” — pushing the party on these issues again.
In 1990, I led Pro-Wilson ‘90, the statewide coalition to elect Gov. Pete Wilson — a pro-choice, pragmatic, skilled leader — over Dianne Feinstein. Serving as his secretary of trade and commerce was the highlight of my career. A very successful governor, he was the last selected in a GOP primary to win statewide — 34 years ago! Half his cabinet were women. He was an all-too-rare Republican.
Feinstein was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1992, the first Year of the Woman, when 54 women — only 14 Republicans — went to Congress, partly fueled by outrage over Clarence Thomas’s confirmation to the Supreme Court.
Was it a GOP wakeup call? No. Twenty years later, after a principled Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, lost in 2012, the party conducted an “autopsy” that demanded reform — and ignored it.
Donald Trump came down his golden escalator in 2015. Twice divorced, a philanderer who bragged about assaulting women, and a malignant narcissist who declared his candidacy by trashing Mexicans, he was a real low for the GOP. His unexpected win saw as many as 5 million women — and men — protest his presidency around the world. The Washington D.C. protest alone attracted three times the number of people as his inauguration.
It felt like a tipping point.
Two years later, and 26 years after the Year of the Woman Feinstein represented, a record 126 women — only 21 Republican — were elected to the House and Senate in the mid-.
Though defeated in 2020, Trump had already transformed the Supreme Court with three appointees who broke their promises under oath to respect judicial precedent and took away women’s reproductive freedom.
The result? We’re seeing devastating and growing impacts on women’s health care. Women have died; physicians fear criminal prosecution for exercising medical judgment; nearly a third of women are deprived of access to timely medical care.
The anger unleashed by the Dobbs decision has not abated; 63% want the protections afforded by Roe enshrined into law. This year 10 states will have abortion rights measures on the ballot, on top of six successful initiatives in 2022. This backlash has Trump and Vance scrambling to have it both ways. But we know who they are. The word “abortion” appears on 60 different pages in Project 2025. This “mandate” for the Trump presidency, written by 140 former Trump istration officials, includes national restrictions on abortion. Abortion medication mifepristone and in vitro fertilization are in jeopardy; women’s pregnancies may be monitored.
For me, individual responsibility and personal freedom are broader than this one issue. My concerns about Trump go far beyond Dobbs to issues like book banning, threatening dedicated teachers, rewriting our history, backtracking on LGBT rights, ignoring gun safety, limiting immigration, and enacting dangerous economic policy.
Global issues are equally important. Trump’s tariff plans (be clear: a tariff is a tax on American consumers) and his naive, nativist foreign policy and love of autocrats over democracies like Ukraine are exceedingly dangerous. Our global economic leadership and our national security are at risk at the very time we have rebuilt invaluable alliances in a very fraught world. The autocrats are watching closely.
Kamala Harris has momentum, but the election is uncomfortably close. Yet in 2022, there were 7.4 million more women than men ed to vote.
What can you do? Share this column. Participate in virtual phone banks targeting critical swing states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, North Carolina and Georgia. Volunteer for Get Out The Vote efforts.
Vote! Every single vote will count in this critical election.
Our nation cannot risk the chaos of another Trump presidency. Women — and the men who them — will make the difference in 2024.
Meier Wright is a retired CEO of the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation. She lives in La Jolla.
