‘Disappointing’ Year For Female Politicians In Essex County: Study

ESSEX COUNTY, NJ — UPDATE: The Center for American Women and Politics has noted that it didn't include a female mayor from Essex County in its original study. The updated study shows that Essex County has 9% women in mayoral seats, moving it into a tie for 11th place overall in the state on the CAWP report card for 2022. Our updated article follows below.

There’s a word that researchers at the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP) are using to describe the progress for New Jersey’s female politicians over the past year: “Disappointing.”

That’s the 2022 analysis from the unit of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University, which recently released the results of its annual report card. The takeaway from this year’s study? Women’s representation remains “fundamentally stalled” in many New Jersey counties – including Essex County.

“While women made incremental gains as county commissioners and in municipal council offices, they lost ground as mayors in New Jersey since CAWP’s previous report card in 2021,” researchers said.

Essex County had a dubious distinction this year, with Millburn Mayor Maggee Miggins and Sheena Collum, the village president of South Orange, as the only female mayors out of 22 seats (about 9 percent) at the time of the study – which put the county near the bottom of the pack in New Jersey. The top-ranked county for mayor representation is Union County, where women hold 38 percent of mayoral offices.

In West Orange, however, Susan McCartney bucked the trend in the 2022 general election when she became the first woman to capture a mayoral seat in the township. She will take office in 2023. Read More: Candidates Claim Victory In West Orange (See Election Results)

Other 2022 statistics for Essex County included:

• Proportion of women county commissioners – 3 out of 9 (33%), ranked 11th out of 21 counties
• Proportion of women council members – 45 out of 133 (34%), ranked 8th out of 21 counties

According to the CAWP, here are the latest stats for the Garden State (see the chart below):

“With a gain of just two seats in county commissioner (formerly freeholder) offices, women now hold 36% of these seats statewide, up from 35% in 2021. Women gained a total of 26 seats on city and town councils, but, with 3,109 such seats statewide, women’s share of these municipal council offices remained essentially unchanged at 30%. Meanwhile, women lost ground as mayors between 2021 and 2022, losing seven mayoralties and falling from 18% of mayoral seats to 16.8%.”

The top three counties in 2022 for women’s representation in the 2022 overall rankings are Union, Middlesex and Somerset; these three counties also were the top three in 2021, with Middlesex moving ahead of Somerset this year.

“It’s discouraging to see such sluggish growth, and in some cases, contraction, for women’s representation in county and local offices in New Jersey,” CAWP Associate Director Jean Sinzdak said.

“In the midterm elections, we tracked new records for women across levels of office nationally, albeit in small increments, but here in New Jersey it seems tremendously difficult to move the needle for county and local offices,” Sinzdak said.

• See related article: Mayor In Essex County Blasts 'Misogynistic' Shot At Mikie Sherrill

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