On November 5, 1996, Bill Clinton was reelected President of the United States. History remembers that part easily. What it tends to forget is what else happened that same night.
Voters sent a record number of women to Congress, building on the historic wave of 1992, the “Year of the Woman.” Women didn’t just show up to vote. They ran, they won, and they changed the face of American government.
These weren’t token victories. Women of both parties won House seats across the country. Women who run for office have always been told the timing isn’t right. The women of 1996 decided the timing was exactly right.
Thirty years later, the work is far from finished. Pew Research reports that 17 states have never had a woman governor and 15 have never sent a woman to the Senate. Women are more than half the population and still far from half of Congress. The gap between who we are and who represents us is not a historical footnote. It is a present-day emergency.
But November 5, 1996 proved something Leading Ladies Vote has always known: when women organize, mobilize, and vote, the map changes.
That tradition is still alive, and it is ours to carry forward. Our vote is our power.