Abby Finkenauer in NY Times today. Don't miss women campaigns video at link!! [View all]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/14/us/politics/women-candidates-midterms.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news

The guys at the union hall have just swapped out the first keg when Abby Finkenauer, Democratic candidate for Congress, arrives and immediately reveals the kind of vulnerability that campaign consultants have long told women to avoid.

She starts by discussing her $20,000 in student loan debt, then recalls waiting by the phone as a little girl for word that her father would finally get work as a pipefitter. She brags about her baby nephew (“he’s very, very cute”).

At 29, Ms. Finkenauer might worry about seeming inexperienced. But she mentions her two terms as a state legislator almost peripherally. This race, she tells them, is “so dang personal to me.” And the men in workboots and T-shirts nod at the young woman in skinny jeans and a soft pink jacket.

“It’s personal” is the tagline to Ms. Finkenauer’s television ads, and it could serve as the slogan for so many other female candidates — mostly Democratic, but some Republicans — in this year’s midterms, women who are breaking carefully calculated and not always successful rules about how they can and should present themselves.