Barbara Comstock (R-Va.) represented Virginia’s 10th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives from 2015 to 2019. Prior to her time in Congress, she served in the Virginia House of Delegates. She is currently an IOP Resident Fellow for Spring 2019.
Harvard Political Review: You were a moderate Republican woman serving in Congress under both the Obama and Trump administrations. How did that impact your experience in the House, and how did your experience differ under the two administrations?
Barbara Comstock: Before I came to Congress, I had worked in Congress for the Congressman that I ended up replacing, and I also served in the state house for five years. Working with my local congressman for five years, I knew the issues of my district, and serving in the State House, I knew how to get a bill through Congress and I knew how to create bills, get them through the process, and build coalitions, and I had done that through a number of jobs. I tried to do that under two presidents that I didn’t vote for.
When I was in the state house, I had Terry McAuliffe as governor and Bob McDonald before that. McDonald was the only executive I’ve had a close working relationship with and that I’ve strongly supported, but I learned through getting bills with McAuliffe that you have to build coalitions to get things done and find whatever the issue is, go out and find the coalition and try to crowd out all the noise and the fighting and focus on that issue. If things were bipartisan like that, you knew the President would end up supporting it.
A lot of what’s on TV — the fighting and all — is being done by people who don’t pass legislation, and the fights that go on are often irrelevant to the legislation we’re passing on a day-to-day basis. A lot of these people want to be celebrities, they want to be congressional Kardashians. One of the things I didn’t do much of when I was in Congress was get on TV unless I had a really important issue that I thought needed to have discussion on — like sexual harassment — but on most of my bills, it was working behind the scenes and doing the day-to-day work you had to do.
HPR: One of the highlights from the CNN Town Hall [on April 22] was Elizabeth Warren, who got a question about being “Hillary-ed” in the general election. What do you see as the odds of the Democrats nominating a woman for President in 2020, and what are the odds we have a woman in the oval office in the near future?
BC: I do think we’ll have a woman president in the near future, but I think it’s more likely to be someone like Nikki Haley. We also have a number of good woman governors now, on my side.
So far, I don’t see a woman who would break out of the Democratic pack and be nominated. I do think Amy Klobuchar might be more competitive than some of the other women out there, but I don’t see her path there. I think it’s wide open. I’ve worked on four presidential campaigns, and none of them ever turned out the way pundits expected or I expected. I’ve never been that good at predicting on the other side, so I figured it’s more important to focus on your team and what’s going to happen there.
It was interesting, the question asked on being “Hillary-ed.” Often in campaigns, people fight the last battle and they don’t understand the battle they’re in, or the battle they lost and why they lost it. I don’t think the Democrats have an understanding of why Hillary lost or the middle America angst. I think both parties are going through a struggle to deal with the changes technology is bringing, which I think have a way of lifting up everybody. Getting through that process is a challenge, so there ends up being demagoguery on both sides.
I do think Mayor Pete’s interesting in talking differently than the others are. He has a feel of what he wants to do, and since he’s from Middle America, he might have a better sense of that, so it’ll be interesting to see how far he goes. You never know who stays in and how long they stay in and how that ultimately impacts the race.
I think the Democrats have a bit of the problem Republicans had in 2016, where Trump had a solid third and none of the other guys would coalesce around another person to be the alternative to Trump. As a result, he carried the nomination with that 30 percent. I think Bernie seems to be in that pole position of having 30 percent, so will there be someone who breaks out and can be the alternative? If they start doing to Bernie what Hillary did to him, then there has to be a clear alternative.
HPR: What’s your advice for the next generation of women and girls who want to enter politics, especially on the Republican side?
BC: I am very dedicated to that. I am working with a group called Winning for Women, as well as ViewPAC, and I’m working with Elise Stefanik who’s also started a PAC to get more women elected. I’m working on getting women through the primaries: getting them to run in the first place, getting them elected not just in the swing seats where women have been more prominent as Republicans, but getting them into the redder seats where they don’t have the more treacherous elections but also so they can stay there longer.
You have people like Liz Cheney now, as well as Shelley Moore Capito from West Virginia, Kristi Noem who just got elected governor of South Dakota. I think governors and state and local government are really important because women tend to do better if they’ve been in those local positions, getting positioned and prepared to run.
I’ve been particularly interested in [gender] parity for Republicans because we aren’t going to have parity or anything close to [overall gender] parity unless we have more Republicans. Even with the large class of women that came in the last election, many of them replaced women who were already there, or retired, or they beat a Republican woman. We didn’t move the percentages up as much because the Republican percentage went down. Women are only 6.5 percent of the Republican caucus right now, whereas Democrats are closer to 40 percent. Since I don’t think Democratic men are going to give up on running, there’s going to have to be more Republican women.
I think finding partnerships and getting more women engaged in government and running for office will be something that my kids and your generation will do, and I think that’s exciting.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Image Source: Wikimedia/United States Congress