In the months before Donald Trump was elected president, Tara Zrinski knocked on thousands of doors in Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley to talk with voters about environmental policy. She hoped that the conversations might help elect Hillary Clinton.

But some of her most poignant interactions were not about policy. They were about husbands.

“We heard women saying that they didn’t want to vote against their husband,” Zrinksi said. “That they weren’t going to vote because they didn’t want to cancel out his vote.”

Trump scored a narrow upset victory in the county, which had voted twice for Barack Obama. Trump’s support among women in Northampton probably mirrored his majority support among white women nationally, local pollsters say. That support helped Trump grab the state of Pennsylvania, and the White House.

Women are realizing, I’ve got to step up, I’ve got to take care of myself, I’ve got to take care of my kids Vanessa Williams

The loss was devastating for activists like Zrinski. But it was also galvanizing, to an extent that has begun to look bad – possibly alarmingly bad – for Trump and Republicans. Because one year after the presidential election, a wave of first-time female candidates stood for state and local office in Northampton County and across the United States – and they won.

“It was a huge Republican bloodbath, is the only word I can think of for it,” said Peg Ferraro, a popular Republican who narrowly retained her seat on Northampton’s County council.

For the past year, the Guardian has been exploring Trump’s win in Northampton County for our series The Promise. As summer has turned to fall, doubts have grown locally about whether Trump could win the county again, which could have implications for his national staying power. And women are at the center of the story.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tara Zrinski, an activist and first-time candidate now elected to the Northampton County council. Photograph: Mark Makela/The Guardian

Democratic and progressive women in Northampton County have been motivated by frustration with Trump, but their feelings of disenfranchisement go beyond the president, they said.

“I really describe it as a kind of quiet rage,” said Vanessa Williams, 35, a local activist and organizer. “And you see it explode every once in a while. It’s really come out a lot again with all the sexual assault allegations that are coming out.

“Women are just pissed, frankly. They’ve had it. I think up to now it’s been a lot of talk of, ‘There, there, we’ll take care of it, we’ll take care of you’.

“And it’s not happening. And women are realizing, I’ve got to step up, I’ve got to take care of myself, I’ve got to take care of my kids.”

Psychotherapist Lori Vargo Heffner, 56, has never held elective office, but in November she mounted a successful bid for Northampton County council on the Democratic side. The council controls a budget of $400m and has jurisdiction over important infrastructure including bridges, a nursing home and a jail.

“I think women got energized,” said Heffner in an interview in the deep-cushioned office where she counsels clients. “I don’t want to give him the credit. I want to say it was watching Hillary lose.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Activist and organizer Vanessa Williams in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Photograph: Mark Makela/The Guardian

“Watching an intelligent woman, who had every qualification for that office, lose. She seemed to have it in the bag, and still not be able to pull out the win – it was a shock. And I think more women stepped up to say, I’m going to run for this office, even if it’s a small office. And other women emerged to help the people that ran.”

Zrinski, 42, won a seat on the county council alongside Heffner, increasing the number of women on the nine-person council from one to three. She spoke with the Guardian over lunch hour at the Apollo Grill in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

“There were people who, when I knocked on a door, said, ‘You’re a woman, I’m voting for you, we need more women in office’,” said Zrinksi, a first-time candidate. “And I heard that theme a lot.”

Gains for women and Democrats were not restricted to Northampton County. Women won seven out of seven races for open judicial posts in Pennsylvania. Elsewhere in the US, the representation of women in the Virginia state legislature jumped by almost 50%. Democrats grabbed the New Jersey governor’s mansion on 55% support among women. The city of Seattle elected its first woman as mayor in almost a century.

Dana Brown, executive director of the Pennsylvania Center for Women and Politics at Chatham University, said that women made up 38% of all candidates in Northampton County’s 2017 elections – higher than normal, but not high enough.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Morning light illuminates a neighborhood in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Photograph: Mark Makela/The Guardian

“Those of us who are advocates for women in politics, we would love to see that number obviously increase even more,” Brown said. “But certainly it is a sign that women are indeed filing, running and winning at higher rates in 2017 than they have in previous municipal election years, which is very exciting and promising.”

Over breakfast at Billy’s in Bethlehem, Williams said she believes that the set of results has begun to lift the gloom. “People were like, ‘Oh my gosh.’ We actually had wins.”

But there’s a question on everyone’s mind: is it enough? Will the movement outlive the moment? Or does this look like another sure-fire victory for Trump’s opponents that turns out to be an illusion?

‘What’s for supper?’

In the eyes of his critics, Trump as president has demonstrated a hostility to women, nominating hardly any women for important positions, opposing healthcare and family policies that women champion and refusing women the dignity of equals.

The fact that an ongoing national reckoning with sexual harassment and abuse by powerful men seems to have bypassed the president, who was accused during his campaign by more than a dozen women of having touched or kissed them without consent, only exacerbates the sense of injustice and outrage.

Donald Trump's sexual harassment accusers hope president goes way of Weinstein Read more

There are plenty of Republican women in Northampton County, and Democratic women who voted for Trump, who continue to support the president. They say his 2016 opponent, Clinton, was irredeemably corrupt, and that his offer of economic resurgence was better for women than her offer of identity politics.

Ferraro, the Republican county councilwoman, supports Trump, who she says has not been given a fair chance by the media. But she’s not confident that he would win in Northampton again tomorrow.



“If I were a betting person, I would say no,” Ferraro said. “It depends who the candidates were. If it were Hillary again, I don’t know – it might be closer. But I’m not sure she could win.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lori Vargo Heffner, a psychotherapist, had never held elective office before she was voted on to the county council. Photograph: Mark Makela/The Guardian

But Ferraro, 76, said a focus on women per se in office was misplaced.

“I just do not appreciate the gender thing,” Ferraro said in a phone interview. “I think if they’re qualified, we all have to be judged equally. I think sometimes the perception is that women are a little bit more caring, women are a little bit more honest, trustworthy. But that was years ago, when I ran the first time. We’re talking the 80s.

“At this day and age, I think that women have come into their own enough that I’m hoping that we can be looked at for our competence, and our skills – for what we bring to the table. Not just because we’re a women.”

When I get done with a campaign event, I still have to do the laundry. I’m still expected to have traditional roles Lori Vargo Heffner

Heffner, one of Ferraro’s incoming colleagues, offered an opposing view, saying that women considering a career in public service still face unique challenges.



“I think it’s difficult to run for office as a female, and it’s going to sound so sexist, but it is still sexist,” Heffner said.

“Because when I get done with a campaign event, I still have to go home and do the laundry. I walk in and my dad goes, ‘What’s for supper?’ I’m still expected to have those traditional roles, beyond my workday. Whereas I know that my colleagues who are male had wives to support them and be home for them, and their wives were at the events with them.

“I don’t want to demean my male colleagues. People just have different expectations of women, I think.”

‘You can vote’

Lizzie Morasco, 28, an activist with the progressive group NextGen America, knocked on 2,400 doors before the elections this month, she said. She pointed out that Pennsylvania still has a long way to go in terms of equal representation of women.

Just 47 of 253 seats in the Pennsylvania legislature are held by women, or 18.6%, good for a 40th ranking nationally, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. There are no women among Pennsylvania’s 20 members of Congress and zero women among statewide elected executives.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Lizzie Morasco, an activist with NextGen Rising. Photograph: Mark Makela/The Guardian

Whatever barriers to entry there may be for women in Northampton county politics, they are not visible at a glance on paper. As the former home of Bethlehem Steel, the county has been a capital for industry in the state, but it is also a center for academia, with 11 regional colleges and universities. It matches the national average for women in the civilian workforce and tops the average in household income. It’s an easy day trip to New York City or Philadelphia and back.

And yet the barriers are still there, perhaps for the reasons Heffner suggested, or fashioned from deep-seated patterns more difficult to document. More than a year after she went door-to-door for Clinton, Zrinksi’s voice tightened and her face blushed as she remembered talking with women who said they were turning their votes over to their husbands.



“You thought to yourself, ‘Don’t you realize that you have a mind of your own, and that you can vote?” she said. “You have the right to vote! Women fought for that right.’ And you think to yourself, ‘If this is what women think in the Lehigh Valley, what do women think in other parts of the country?’”

Judging by the election results, a lot of women in the Lehigh Valley, and in other parts of the country, were thinking the same thing. They were thinking it was time to elect more women.

But Heffner counseled caution.

“I think it’s a very good start,” she said. “But you can’t get locked into the complacency of the win. Because next you have 2018.”

Sign up for regular email dispatches throughout the year to hear from Tom and the people of Northampton County