"It starts more like a Nike commercial than a political ad. The camera pans over a wintry landscape, and a woman appears, wearing a hot-pink racing jacket, hair in a ponytail, music building as she runs. Her voice comes in, telling the story of a race she ran with her father as a young girl: Just as a boy and his dad moved ahead of her, her father asked if she was going to let the kid beat her. ... The woman is Erin Collier, candidate for Congress. After touting her family’s eight generations in upstate New York and her work as an agricultural economist for the Obama administration, she says, 'I’m a woman, I’m an economist, I’m a farmer, I’m a triathlete, I’m a feminist. I’m not going to let those boys beat me.' It’s an extraordinary ad, and not just because of its girl-power, pink-sneaker aesthetic. Collier doesn’t just embrace her gender. She speaks to a woman who has rarely existed before in the American political imagination: ambitious, successful, and, most notably (even jarringly), competitive. A record number of women are running for office this year. A few are Republican, but the vast majority are Democrats. ..."
New Republic
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