The votes are in!
From the Pantagraph: “Voters on Tuesday went to the polls to decide a variety of races, including contested contests for the Bloomington and Normal city councils and the Unit 5 and District 87 school boards.” IWU’s very own Karen Schmidt was re-elected to Bloomington city council for Ward 6.
Speaking of elections, Ames Library has hundreds of resources to help you learn all about election processes, trends, and history. Check out this newly published book, Gender in campaigns for the US House of Representatives.
From the publisher: “Barbara Burrell presents a comprehensive comparative examination of men’s and women’s candidacies for the U.S. 
House of Representatives in elections from 1994 through 2012. Analyzing extensive data sets on all major party candidates for 10 elections—covering candidate status, party affiliation, fund-raising, candidate background variables, votes obtained, and success rates for both primary and general elections—Burrell finds little evidence of categorical discrimination against women candidates. Women compete equally with men and often outpace them in raising money, gaining interest group and political party support, and winning elections.
Yet the number of women elected to the U.S. House has expanded only incrementally. The electoral structure limits opportunities for newcomers to win congressional seats and there remains a lower presence of women in winnable contests despite growing recruitment efforts. Burrell suggests that congressional dysfunction discourages potential candidates from pursuing legislative careers and that ambitious women are finding alternative paths to influence and affect public policy.”
Want to earn some points in your next Sociology class? Check out this book, Race, gender, and class in the tea party: What the movement reflects about mainstream ideologies, written by IWU’s own Prof. Meghan Burke!
From Amazon.com: “It has been all too tempting to characterize the Tea Party as an irrational, racist, astro-turf movement composed of members who are working to subvert their own economic interests. Race, Gender, and Class in the Tea Party reveals a much messier and much more fascinating analysis of this movement. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with organizers and fieldwork at conservative campaign trainings and conventions, its rich ethnographic data explores how the active folks in this movement, specifically organizers in one Midwestern state, understand their world, and how they act on that basis to change it. As this book will reveal, most Tea Party organizers do depend on deeply flawed understandings of race and class—either believing wholeheartedly in myths, or confining their analyses to the narrow limits of the conservative media system. Yet, Tea Party racism is simply American racism.
Race, Gender, and Class in the Tea Party reveals the complexities and contradictions inherent in this movement, where organizers attempt to reconcile their personal experiences with their conservative politics. In the end, these dynamics reveal as much about us as it does about the Tea Party. It is certain to challenge all of our politics, and especially our scholarly thinking, about the movement, and offers a path toward real conversations about our collective future in the United States.”