Four Men Are in the Back of a Taxi. Where Are the Women?

The latest edition of New York magazine sports a cover that’s a sight to behold. Four white men, in near-matching suits — with ties in various shades of blue and black — are squeezed together in the back of a New York City taxicab. Their facial expressions suggest that one of them just cracked a joke and that they’re trying to hold it together and smile nicely for the camera. 

The four men in question are the leading candidates for New York’s 12th Congressional District, which covers a sprawling area of the city that stretches from east to west across Manhattan, and nearly the length of the island, from Union Square in the south up to Manhattan Valley in the north. It encompasses about 752,000 residents.

If you’re not familiar with New York’s districts, you’re not alone. But suffice it to say, District 12 is a sizable swathe, and home to some of the country's richest and most powerful individuals: elites, billionaires, and magnates. In other words, the ruling class. It is, by most accounts, one of the wealthiest districts in the nation. 

Now, with 78-year-0ld Jerrold Nadler retiring from Congress after what will be a 35-year-run, the hordes of campaign strategists have sprung into action. They recognize this moment for what it may well turn out to be: a once-in-a-generation opportunity for change. It’s not that the district will go Republican; District 12 is among the most solidly Democratic in the state. But this might be an opportunity for some new faces – finally. 

Except the four men jostling for space in the back of the cab are all well-known entities: Jack Schlossberg, grandson of former President John F. Kennedy; former-Republican-turned Never Trumper George Conway, the ex-husband of Kellyanne Conway, President Trump’s erstwhile campaign manager; and Micah Lasher and Alex Bores, who are both currently New York State Assembly members.

Upon seeing this cover, my question was: Aren’t there any women running? Or people of color or, well, isn’t there anyone else?

I’m not naive. There’s a logic as to why this particular quartet made it into the shot. These four men have all demonstrated that they have qualities deserving of the front runners they are. Objectively, none is a dud. A quick glance at the Federal Election Commission website also makes it clear that they’ve each raised more money (by far!) than any of the other candidates, male or female. (Spoiler: There are other candidates!) But that didn’t stop me from wondering why— in a district at the heart of  a city that prides itself on diversity— certain people seem to be missing from the picture. 

They are there

Dig a bit deeper, as I did, and you’ll discover that there are actually women running. As of the end of March, the highest-ranking female candidate in terms of money raised was Jami Floyd, who, despite this success, recently announced that she was suspending her congressional campaign. On her website, the attorney, network news anchor, political analyst and former White House Fellow explained her decision thus: “This race has laid bare a system where who you know and how much money you can raise matters more than what you stand for.” 

Floyd’s exit bumped up the next woman in the race, Nina Schwalbe, also a Democrat and a public health practitioner with a Ph.D. According to her website, in 2021, Schwalbe was appointed by the Biden-Harris Administration to design, launch, and implement a $7 billion USAID initiative that delivered a billion Covid-19 vaccines to low- and lower-middle-income countries. 

The next highest fundraiser on the list is the Democratic candidate, Laura Dunn, a civil rights attorney and former public school teacher. She is followed by Caroline Shinkle, the lone Republican, whose career has spanned positions at the European Central Bank, the Bank of Israel and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. She also holds a law degree from Harvard.

Not to point out the obvious, but these women are categorically qualified. There are many reasons why they, too, deserve a place on the cover of a magazine — and possibly in office. They might not be incumbent politicians or descendants of lionized statesmen; they might not have sprawling networks; Super PACs, AI companies or famous families funneling them money; they might not have broad name recognition. But to erase them entirely — really?

What’s the threshold? 

Of course this is a story about New York, but to my mind it’s also a story about something broader: who gets to be seen as viable. As Jami Floyd so eloquently alluded to above, visibility in politics is rarely accidental, or even a matter of the most deserving or qualified rising to the top. It is constructed — through money, through the covers of magazines, and through networks of influence that determine who is taken seriously and who is treated as a footnote. 

In an email to me, Nina Schwalbe posed a pertinent question: “What’s the threshold for coverage, and who sets it?” She added that mainstream media outlets have “chosen to focus on the celebrities and billionaire backed candidates, all of whom are men.” But, she concluded, “democracy demands an accountable, transparent media. No opaque filters. No editorial gatekeepers deciding whose voice matters and whose doesn't.”

In other words, when four men are framed as the candidates to watch, it reinforces the idea that leadership looks a certain way — and that anything outside of that frame is peripheral. 

Present, but diminished

Too often, women in politics are present but not seen, filtered out through systems that privilege familiarity over merit. Whether we like it or not, we’re all prone to what’s known as the familiarity heuristic, a cognitive bias that tilts us toward what feels, well, familiar, in this case four men in the back of a taxicab.

In much the same way, fundraising networks and political pipelines tend to reward those who already have access to wealth and power. This happens everywhere, but it also strikes me as a particularly American phenomenon. Media coverage gravitates toward recognizable names and narratives because those names and narratives sell. And so the story goes.

There is no easy way to dismantle the systems and structures that have led us to this reality. This is, after all, how politics works — you need money, you need connections, you need name recognition to win. 

But when someone — or a group of someones — is conspicuously absent from a photograph, from a ballot, from a newspaper article or a magazine cover, there’s probably a broader story to tell. Because  as long as we mistake visibility for viability, we’ll keep telling ourselves that it’s a fair race, even when the playing field was never level from the start.