Women’s Role in the Rainbow: Electoral Coalitions, Competition, and Descriptive Representation in American City Governments

Do historically excluded groups work together to further their electoral interests or do they primarily compete for a limited number of spots not absorbed by dominant interests? A growing body of work examines the dynamics of electoral coalition building versus competition but fails to incorporate fully the complexities of group identification or address how women fit into this puzzle. Applying an intersectional approach and focusing on American cities, I propose that women’s memberships in and collaboration with racial and ethnic minority groups influences their ability to gain government posts. Given their common experiences of exclusion, non-minority women, minority women, and minority men oftentimes join forces to win municipal elections. Minority women, in particular, use their crossover appeal to develop strategic electoral partnerships. I present case material from Atlanta, GA and Houston, TX and then analyze a new data source on California’s city elections to gauge the accuracy of the proposed hypotheses. The qualitative material is used to provide a nuanced conceptualization of interand intra-group coalition building. The findings from the quantitative analysis suggest that, particularly at lower levels of representation, non-minority and minority female political leaders form partnerships to win municipal legislative elections in California.