--- title: GOP Congresswomen Have Some Advice for Their Party’s 2016 Candidates description: House Republican women have some advice for the GOP in 2016: listen to us before you speak. canonical: https://time.com/3958099/republican-congresswomen-2016/ author: Jay Newton-Small article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-07-15T01:41:51.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-19T07:47:12.594Z article:section: Politics og:title: Congresswomen Have Some 2016 Advice for the GOP og:description: "We really have to watch our language." og:url: https://time.com/3958099/republican-congresswomen-2016/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt54caafc6ffe30f16/69885ae6196cf434f30371ac/elise-stefanik-mimi-walters.jpg?branch=production&width=594&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 594 og:image:height: 334 og:image:alt: Reps. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., right, and Mimi Walters, R-Calif., are pictured during the election for Speaker before the 114th Congress was sworn in on the House floor, January 6, 2015. og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Congresswomen Have Some 2016 Advice for the GOP twitter:description: "We really have to watch our language." twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt54caafc6ffe30f16/69885ae6196cf434f30371ac/elise-stefanik-mimi-walters.jpg?branch=production&width=594&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # GOP Congresswomen Have Some Advice for Their Party’s 2016 Candidates > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: August 2026. ## TIME D.C. Brief: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition D.C. Brief is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, three times a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Jay Newton-Small](https://time.com/author/jay-newton-small/)  ## Jay Newton-Small Jul 15, 2015 1:41 AM UTC  Reps. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., right, and Mimi Walters, R-Calif., are pictured during the election for Speaker before the 114th Congress was sworn in on the House floor, January 6, 2015. Reps. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., right, and Mimi Walters, R-Calif., are pictured during the election for Speaker before the 114th Congress was sworn in on the House floor, January 6, 2015. Tom Williams—CQ-Roll Call,Inc.  by [Jay Newton-Small](https://time.com/author/jay-newton-small/)  ## Jay Newton-Small Jul 15, 2015 1:41 AM UTC House Republican women have some advice for the largely male field of 2016 would be GOP presidential nominees hoping to take on Hillary Clinton: listen to us before you speak. “Women are the majority!” exclaimed Rep. Martha McSally, an Arizona Republican, referring to the fact that America is 52% female. “We really have to watch our language when we’re talking about some of these issues. … The language just turns women off because we come off as the party of just cold, lack of compassion.” McSally cited [an exit poll in the 2012 presidential election](http://www.usatoday.com/interactives/news/politics/how-the-race-was-won) that showed that 81.2% of voters felt President Obama “cared about people like me,” compared to just 17.6% of voters for Republican nominee Mitt Romney. Romney lost the election in large part because he lost women by [12 percentage points](http://www.gallup.com/poll/158588/gender-gap-2012-vote-largest-gallup-history.aspx) to President Obama. And though Republicans in 2014 won back the Senate and made gains in the House, they only incrementally added women: a net of two in the House and one in the Senate. And they net lost one female governor. Pundits often talk about GOP demographic challenges with minorities and young voters, but since the so-called War on Women petered out after 2012— after Republicans figured out how to stop saying egregiously insulting things about rape, little has been said about the GOP’s biggest demographic challenge: women. “We have a problem,” said Mimi Walters, a California Republican and the freshman representative on the House leadership team, “and we’re working to address it.” The conservative _National Review_ magazine and Google gathered five Republican Congresswomen—McSally, Walters, Missouri’s Ann Wagner, McSally, Walters, Virginia’s Barbara Comstock and New York’s Elise Stefanik—on Tuesday to talk about the challenges their party faces with women. All agreed that the GOP candidates needed to be consulting them, especially when the eventual nominee will likely be running against a woman: Hillary Clinton. “I will tell you: we will fail, and these men will fail, if they try and package \[Clinton\] as someone who’s stupid and doesn’t know her job, hasn’t done her job, and isn’t real, isn’t strong,” said Wagner, who is the sophomore class’ leadership representative. “They need us at the table to remind them of the words to use, the words not to use.” All of the women said they had heard from one or more of the campaigns and were consulting with them and/or the Republican National Committee. They also spoke of their own efforts to find and elect more women to Congress, though they acknowledged that that effort was hamstrung by the limited number of competitive races given how gerrymandered congressional districts have become. On the presidential level, Comstock said it was important that the campaigns hire senior women to run them, which could be a challenge because women don’t like to take risky jobs that may not lead to permanent employment should their candidate lose, Comstock said. So, she said, the campaigns had to be proactive and seek women out. “One of the things I’ve asked them is: where am I at the table? Who do you have on staff?” Comstock said. “The reality is if there are women at the top they recruit other women and bring them in and that is also something I have been demanding of the candidates.” So far the candidates don’t seem to be listening too closely. Only one major candidate has a female campaign manager: Mike Huckabee’s daughter Sarah is running her dad’s bid. A quick search reveals that of the top 16 GOP candidates, only Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, former Texas Gov. Rick Perry and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul have set up “Women for…” pages on Facebook. That said, former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina—one of the 13 without a dedicated page for women—has spent a lot of time courting the women’s vote. “I hope she makes the top 10, I think she’s been very effective in going after Hillary Clinton,” said Wagner, referring to the debate cutoff of the top 10 candidates in polling. “I think she’s done it in a way that’s responds with women.” In the latest round of surveys, Fiorina [broke into the top 10](http://townhall.com/tipsheet/danieldoherty/2015/06/25/fox-2016-poll-carly-fiorina-quietly-finishes-in-top-10-n2017468) for the first time, with 3% of the vote. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3958099/republican-congresswomen-2016/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3958099/republican-congresswomen-2016/"},"headline":"GOP Congresswomen Have Some Advice for Their Party’s 2016 Candidates","datePublished":"2015-07-15T01:41:51.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-19T07:47:12.594Z","description":"House Republican women have some advice for the GOP in 2016: listen to us before you speak.","url":"https://time.com/3958099/republican-congresswomen-2016/","keywords":["2016 Election","Hillary Clinton","2016 Election","Congress","Rand Paul","Scott Walker","rick perry","Carly Fiorina"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt54caafc6ffe30f16/69885ae6196cf434f30371ac/elise-stefanik-mimi-walters.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jay Newton-Small","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/jay-newton-small/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt54caafc6ffe30f16/69885ae6196cf434f30371ac/elise-stefanik-mimi-walters.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Reps. 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