A new campaign advertisement targeting Republican U.S. Senate candidate Ken Buck put out by a political nonprofit group called Women’s Voices pulls together a short list of statements and positions Buck has made and taken that have increasingly called into question his commitment to women’s rights. The ad cites Colorado Independent reporting regarding his stance on reproductive rights and on a 2005 rape case in which his public and private opinions as district attorney on the case seemed intended to blame and demean the victim.
“We need leaders who will stand with us, whether we’re in high heels or cowboy boots. Tell Ken Buck Colorado women deserve respect,” says Leslie Allen, a Boulder mother of three, who is not an actress and is not affiliated with Women’s Voices.
Kelly Landis, spokeswoman for Women’s Voices, told the Colorado Independent that in 2004 the founder of the group, Page Gardner, identified unmarried women as a fast-growing demographic that didn’t vote in high numbers. She formed Women’s Voices and its Women Vote Action Fund to educate unmarried women and get them to the polls.
Women’s Voices told us they made a Colorado ad buy in the “high six figures”, including broadcast and cable TV, radio and internet.
Gardner said unmarried women are one of the largest and one of the fastest growing demographics in the country and make up about 21 percent of the voting-eligible population in Colorado.
Landis said they are less likely to vote than married women but are far more likley to hold progressive values. According to Landis, in 2008 unmarried women voted for Obama by a 70-29 margin, while married women favored McCain by three points.
Even though 257,963 unmarried women voted in Colorado in 2008, the group expects as many as 43 percent of those to sit this election out.
Gardner said unmarried women have different issues than married women. She said they are much less likely to have health insurance than their married counterparts, are more likely to be unemployed, and were hit especially hard by the mortgage crisis. She say nationally, they earn only 56 percent of what married men earn.
Landis said that nearly half of all women in America are unmarried.
Buck this week is battling blow-back from a Meet the Press interview he did Sunday in which he said gay people can choose not to be gay, that like alcoholics predisposed to addiction who battle the lure to drink, gay people with genetic predisposition to same-sex attraction could resist that attraction.
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