Running for Political Office: Views of Legislators with Disabilities

• In Event: Legislative Productivity in the U.S.

Abstract

There are many politicians with a variety of disabilities who have run for office or served in elected positions in United States history, but with some exceptions (notably disabled military veterans), most have chosen to hide or minimize the visibility and extent of their impairments. The advent of the disability rights movement and changes throughout the larger society over the past half-century have the potential to alter the social and political significance of being disabled and have changed the context in which political gatekeepers and members of the public have assessed the credentials of candidates with disabilities. To have an impairment is no longer in itself considered to diminish the stature or undermine the electability of someone seeking office. The number of political candidates and officeholders with disabilities appears to be increasing, and some have chosen to include or even highlight their disabling conditions as they present themselves to their constituents.

Several scholars have conducted case studies or reported on anecdotal data concerning political office holders and candidates with disabilities, but there has been little systematic research to date. Further while much has been written about the few candidates who have achieved high political office—President Franklin Roosevelt and a handful of members of Congress, little is known about the experiences of candidates working at local and state levels, who could of course provide a pipeline for higher office. In the proposed paper, we describe an ongoing project to study the political experiences of individuals with disabilities who either run for office in 2020 or who currently hold elected office.

We are in the process of compiling data from a number of sources to establish a database of candidates with disabilities and officeholders who have run for legislative office at the state, federal, and local levels. Thus does the level of office make a difference? We have been conducting a series of semi-structured interviews with a sample of these candidates and office holders. We are interested first off in tried-and-true political science questions—what got you to run for political office? What’s your constituency like, and if applicable, how do you represent it? Did disability figure in your decisionmaking? We are also of course particularly interested in the perspective of these candidates as to the role disability has played in their campaigns and/or officeholding capacities. how do these candidates manage communication with constituents about their disabling conditions and how, if at all, have these individuals’ conditions affected their campaign strategies and experiences? In short, what are the pros and cons and experiences of running for office with a disability?

Based thus far on a preliminary set of interviews, respondents report experiences similar to nondisabled candidates. Many also report having transparently communicated their disabilities to constituents, and several expounded on the pros and cons of working in political settings with disabilities.

Authors

• Sally Friedman, SUNY, Albany

• Richard Scotch, University of Texas at Dallas