This chapter lays out the book’s central argument and theoretical framework: The enduring gender gap in political ambition results from long-standing patterns of traditional socialization that persist in US culture. More specifically, traditional family role orientations, in which women assume the majority of household and childcare responsibilities, lead many women to conclude that entering politics would restrict their ability to fulfill existing personal and professional obligations. A masculinized ethos in political organizations and institutions that have always been controlled by men continues to promote men’s, not women’s, full participation in the political arena. And a gendered psyche imbues many women with a sense of doubt as to their ability to compete in the electoral sphere. Thus, the enduring effects of traditional gender socialization that transcend all generations pose serious obstacles for true gender equality.

This chapter focuses on the relationships among gender, party, recruitment, and political ambition. First, we focus on potential candidates’ partisan identity. The pool of female potential candidates – like the population of female elected officials – is dominated by Democrats. Yet we find that neither party affiliation nor partisan fervor affects interest in running for office. Still, political parties – through the recruitment process – play a critical role in the candidate emergence process. Here, our analysis highlights one of the book’s central findings: Women are significantly less likely than men to receive encouragement to run for office from party leaders, elected officials, and political activists. Despite the emergence of #MeToo, heightened public discourse about the need to elect more women, and efforts by women’s organizations to push back against Donald Trump, our results are not markedly different from twenty years earlier. The masculinized ethos that continues to shroud party organizations results in a smaller proportion of women than men recruited to enter the electoral arena.

This chapter focuses on the second stage of the candidate emergence process and examines the role gender plays in determining whether a potential candidate actually runs for office. We have the opportunity to assess the role gender plays in transforming politically engaged citizens into actual candidates because 295 people in the 2021 sample ran for office at some point in their lives. Our analysis reveals that the stark gender differences evident in the first stage of the process fade considerably. But because women are far less likely than men to consider running for office, fewer women than men ever face the decision to enter an actual race. Moreover, when we turn to interest in running for office at some point in the future, gender differences persist. Female potential candidates are significantly less likely than men to express interest in a future candidacy, at least in part because of their more negative attitudes about campaigning. Whether we consider retrospective or prospective interest in entering the electoral arena, prospects for closing the gender gap in political ambition are bleak.

Barack Obama's presidential success created a fallacy surrounding how Black voters choose politicians to support. In the wake of his success, many Black politicians unsuccessfully worked to garner Black support using tactics similar to Obama. This chapter breaks down the conventional wisdom that come out of Obama's success and asks motivating question of this manuscript: What considerations outside of race, partisanship, and gender do Black voters make when choosing a politician to support? I introduce my original concept of community commitment and juxtapose it with existing concepts to explain its unique contribution and ability to explain Black voter candidate selection.

In this chapter, I introduce and explain my community commitment signaling framework and its inner workings. Despite the strong preference that scholarship explains Black voters have for politicians with roots in the Civil Rights Movement, those politicians are leaving office, making way for a newer crop of representatives. Does this mean the expectations of Black voters have shifted? If they have not, how do these younger politicians communicate that same commitment their predecessors did? I argue that they have to provide evidence of this commitment through the use of signals that convey their willingness to prioritize the group's interest above their own individual prestige. Those politicians who can provide strong, tangible evidence of this commitment are more likely to be viewed positively by Black voters.

This chapter studies the voting behavior of members of the House of Representatives. If the presence of Fox News in a district shapes potential candidates’ perceptions about district party composition and the constituency’s electoral preferences, there are good chances that the same can be said of sitting House members. Here, of course, the expectation is not about how these perceptions affect the decision to run for office; instead, they affect decisions about how to perform so as to stay in office. Much like potential candidates, sitting members of Congress have to make inferences about what their constituents want. Typically, they make these inferences based on their perceptions of the partisan composition of their district, among other considerations. If sitting members are influenced like potential candidates, Fox News might shift their perceptions in the direction of thinking their district is more right-leaning. Alternatively, based on our evidence from Chapter 3, they might feel more vulnerable to challenges from potential candidates to their (ideological) right. In either case, a reasonable expectation, which we find evidence for, is that member roll call votes will move in a rightward direction, especially among Democrats representing more competitive districts.

This chapter reviews the main points of the manuscript and discusses in detail the implications of this work. Black voters are not the only identity group for whom popular assumptions have been made. Indeed, Latinx and LGBTQ+ voters have also been subject to beliefs about how their identity informs their candidate selection. This chapter deconstructs the community commitment signaling framework to explain how it can be applied to other groups. Moreover, this chapter discusses the limitation of the community commitment signaling and invites deeper thinking about the role of racial identity in political representation.

The broader work on candidate selection often makes the case that usage of identity, particularly race, is a sign of one's lacking political sophistication. In this chapter, I explain that this belief stems from the oversimplification of the conceptualization of race as just skin color. This position ignores the social complexities of racial identity within which many Black individuals operate. Relying on existing observation data, I show that Black voters make important distinctions between politicians based on their perceptions of them as a "problem solver" or a "prestige seeker." This distinction and the subsequent evaluations hold even for Black politicians suggesting that even within the same-race representation paradigm, Black voters' desire for a politician who cares more for the group than themselves remains steadfast. This chapter sets the stage for a deeper exploration into the nuances and distinctions Black voters make between politicians, regardless of their race