ABSTRACT
John Leo called Bill Bradley and John Kerry “political harbingers” of a new school of thought about race that “assumes that old strategies have been exhausted and something new must be tried.” Women’s political orientations—unlike men’s—were assumed to be defined and driven by gender. “In New York, Gender Politics Rule,” according to a USA Today headline—simply because there were two women running for the same US Senate seat. By contrast, the new Hillary is most often described with the word “softer,” a description that again relies on long-standing gender stereotypes of women’s appropriate behavior. The repeated recourse to the “Year of the Woman” tag was some indication of the simplistic and superficial tone of much of the coverage of 1992’s female congressional candidates, as revealed by a Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting survey of major dailies and television news.
