Why Eric Schneiderman's Replacement Needs to Be a Woman
Former New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman resigned on Monday night after four women came forward with accounts, detailed in The New Yorker, of the physical, sexual and emotional abuse he allegedly subjected them to over the course of the last several years.
The women’s accounts of Schneiderman’s actions are harrowing for their details of nonconsensual physical violence — ranging from violent choking to eardrum-rupturing slaps across the face — and psychological trauma. After The New Yorker article came out, Schneiderman was swiftly relegated to a growing list of high-profile men who have been called out for gross abuses of their power.
Schneiderman’s professional decorum, ironically, was completely at odds with his treatment of women behind closed doors. In December, he was rosily profiled in the New York Times for his work combatting the Trump administration’s most egregious legislation, including rollbacks of birth control coverage, a move celebrated by many prominent women’s rights activists. In February, he filed a civil rights lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein and his namesake companies, demanding compensation for the employee-victims of Weinstein’s alleged crimes.
Schneiderman’s public support of women’s issues and the #MeToo movement acted as a smoke screen for his private misogyny, in much the same way Al Franken, a former Democratic senator for the state of Minnesota, was seen as a champion of sorts by his female constituents before accounts of his sexual misconduct came to light last year.
But make no mistake, Schneiderman’s case is distinct.
His position as the top law enforcement official in the state of New York is particularly disconcerting, and it points to a larger issue — even today, there are woefully few women who hold the prosecutorial power that goes along with the office of the Attorney General, an office which acts as the “People’s Lawyer” and an advocate for the public at large.
New York Solicitor General Barbara Underwood’s temporary appointment by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo to Schneiderman’s abdicated seat makes her only the tenth acting female attorney general in the U.S. In the few days that have followed Schneiderman’s resignation, many have called upon the New York legislature to ultimately fill his vacant seat with a woman.
Why the urgency?
“I start from the Ruth Bader Ginsburg quote that there always should be a woman in the place where decisions are being made,” says Amy Matsui, Senior Counsel and Director of Government Relations for the National Women’s Law Center.
“When someone is deciding that they’re going to be implementing the law [and] prosecuting for violations of it, it’s always important to have the perspective of lived experience. Prosecutors and attorneys general have [broad discretion] in moving the law forward. Women should have their perspective represented there.”
When someone is deciding that they’re going to be implementing the law [and] prosecuting for violations of it, it’s always important to have the perspective of lived experience. Women should have their perspective represented.
The office of a state attorney general is elective in all but seven states, meaning most constituents get to pick their attorney general with their vote. While the outcome of the 2016 presidential election has certainly inspired more women to run for office, the attorney general position is not immune to the barriers that women encounter in the process of running for any elected seat.
“Certainly there are more women in the legal profession and moving through the pipeline at all levels over the past 30 or 40 years, but there can still be informal barriers to rising to a top prosecutor level, as there is in any system,” says Matsui.
Ellen Rosenblum is Oregon’s first female attorney general. She was elected in 2012, the first election cycle a woman had ever even run for the position in her state. Of the ten female attorneys general who currently hold office, seven of them are the first women to hold the position in their states.
“It was time for a woman to run and win, and it needed to be somebody who clearly was highly qualified and also, ideally, pretty well known in the community, and I think I fit the bill for both of those,” says Rosenblum.
Prior to running for attorney general in Oregon, Rosenblum was a federal prosecutor and state trial and appellate judge, a solid trajectory to the office of attorney general, and one that hopefully more women can emulate in the years to come. For the first time, there are more women than men attending law school — and yet, as of 2016, only 33 percent of of active United States district or trial court judges were women.
It’s essential that more women are recruited to run and equipped to win attorneys general seats. Attorney General Rosenblum and the Attorney General of Massachusetts, Maura Healey, co-chair an initiative within the Democratic Attorneys General Association that has a goal of getting women elected to 50 percent of the democratically held state attorney general seats by the end of 2022.
Right now, there are only five democratic female attorneys general in office (six counting Underwood in New York), and two of them — Lisa Madigan in Illinois and Janet Mills in Maine — are not seeking reelection this year (Mills is running for governor, however).
Right now, there are only five democratic female attorneys general in office, and two of them are not seeking reelection this year.
The 1881 Initiative, as DAGA has coined it, is an homage to the year that two women first attempted to run for state attorneys general seats (unsuccessfully, and a full four decades before even having the right to vote).
“We’re actually recruiting for women,” says Rosenblum. “We are helping to train them, we are providing them with some services through DAGA so that they can kind of get moving on their campaign and develop their team and their strategy and help them raise a little bit of money so that they can get things going. We support them through the process once they’re the democratic candidate.”
The credible allegations against Schneiderman highlight the urgency of a project such as DAGA’s 1881 Initiative. For the 2018 election, Michigan and Arizona are target states, says Lizzie Ulmer, DAGA’s Communications Director. Dana Nessel in Michigan and January Contreras in Arizona are both 1881 candidates running for seats currently held by Republican men.
“I think what happened in New York is more a moment to showcase that democratic attorneys general across the country are 100 percent opposed to any forms of sexual or domestic abuse, and they are going to continue their work to protect survivors and continue to combat that kind of violence in the work that they do,” says Ulmer. “I see those two things being connected in that sense, but I see the need to have more women in office, and what happened in New York, as two different pieces of the women’s empowerment puzzle.”
New York’s closed primary election for attorney general will be held on September 13, 2018, and the general election will be held on November 6, 2018. The candidate filing deadline is July 12, 2018, and the names of several qualified women have already been proffered as potential nominees, including N.Y. Rep. Kathleen Rice, prosecutor Carrie Cohen and Letitia James, the Public Advocate for the City of New York. None of the women returned requests for interview, but James provided Glamour with the below statement:
“Two days after allegations against the former Attorney General surfaced, we are all still coming to terms with his alleged shocking and grotesque behavior. In line with its constitutional duties, the State Legislature is carrying on a process to select a temporary replacement. I am honored by the encouragement and support I have received and am considering the best ways to continue serving New York. I remain moved by the tremendous courage and bravery that the survivors who came forward demonstrated, and am reminded that women’s voices are needed more than ever at the highest levels of government and in every corner of our society.”