The new Time magazine cover features the portraits of first-time female candidates who say they were inspired to run for office by the Women’s March one year ago.
The cover story, “The Avengers,” by Time correspondent Charlotte Alter, highlights individuals and groups that make up the grass-roots movement of women running for office nationwide.
“Call it payback, call it a revolution, call it the Pink Wave, inspired by marchers in their magenta hats, and the activism that followed,” Alter writes.
“There is an unprecedented surge of first-time female candidates, overwhelmingly Democratic, running for offices big and small, from the U.S. Senate and state legislatures to local school boards.”
According to Time, four times as many Democratic women are running for House seats as Republican women, and twice as many Democrats in Senate races.
The cover story notes that while some women interviewed have long been involved in politics, many said they felt they underwent a “metamorphosis” due to President Trump’s election that inspired them to take part.
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“In 2016, they were ordinary voters. In 2017, they became activists, spurred by the bitter defeat of the first major female presidential candidate at the hands of a self-described p—y grabber. Now, in 2018, these doctors and mothers and teachers and executives are jumping into the arena and bringing new energy to a Democratic Party sorely in need of fresh faces,” the piece reads.
This Time cover comes weeks after the magazine named “The Silence Breakers,” the women who started the #MeToo movement, as its “Person of the Year,” highlighting another major shift in gender politics in the U.S.
The wave of female candidates has already had an impact on smaller races ahead of the 2018 midterms.
EMILY’s List, a group aimed at supporting Democratic female candidates, said last month that more than 25,000 women have reached out to them expressing interest in running for office in the past year.
The organizers of the Women’s March are marking the one-year anniversary of the event by kicking off a voter registration tour.