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Melissa: It's The Takeaway and I'm Melissa Harris-Perry.

Now y'all know me as the host of this fantastic public radio show, but in real life, I'm a college professor. I've been teaching political science for more than 20 years, and nearly half of them at Wake Forest University in North Carolina.

This semester one of my classes was called "Girl's Stories" and we explored how stories written by and about American girls shape our understanding of American history and politics. I was teaching this class at the same time, but here on The Takeaway, we were covering the 2022 midterms through a girl's story of our own.

Our SHElection! series focused on the 2022 midterm races where all of the candidates in the general election were women. Some of those contests were the most exciting and consequential of this election cycle. In a nice piece of intellectual synergy, a small group of my Wake Forest students used the SHElection! matchups as a framework for their final group project. They closely followed several of the key races while analyzing the campaigns and outcomes so we invited them to join us here on The Takeaway.

Cole: My name is Cole Hastings and I'm majoring in sociology and minoring in politics and international affairs.

Emma: My name is Emma Saban and I'm majoring in politics and international affairs and minoring in economics.

Haley: My name is Haley and I'm a politics and international affairs major.

Melissa: Cole, Emma, and Haley followed the gubernatorial SHElections in Oregon, Michigan, and Arizona. We started with Cole's takeaways from Oregon.

Cole: There are three candidates. The Democratic candidate was Tina Kotek, the Republican was Christine Drazan, and then Betsy Johnson was the independent. A lot of what I learned was based on the social media campaign strategies that they utilized and how they mirrored much of what was occurring, both in the debates and in some of their more grassroots events on social media. I think the final results were a lot closer than many people had expected, given Oregon's democratic voting record in the past. They've voted Democrats since, I believe, 1986. The results were a lot closer than I believe people expected, but Tina Kotek did win.

Melissa: Emma, let me come to you because you were following closely the Michigan gubernatorial SHElection. What did you take away from that race?

Emma: My election was also fairly interesting, which I had a vested interest in as someone who used to live in Michigan. We were following Republican candidate Tudor Dixon and Democratic candidate Gretchen Whitmer. Gretchen Whitmer, otherwise known as Big Gretch, is an incumbent Democratic candidate. She had been the former governor this past term. Then Tudor Dixon is a Trump-endorsed former television anchor and former steelworker candidate who's actually originally from Kentucky but then moved to rural Michigan. The entire election pretty much, Gretchen Whitmer had about just under a 10% lead and this followed right up until election week.

What I found particularly interesting was the ramped-up social media use by both candidates during their final week. Tudor Dixon, for example, definitely used a lot of slightly aggressive social media tactics to try to undermine Gretchen Whitmer in the final week, and then Gretchen Whitmer was using very heavily Twitter and Instagram in her final week as well. While this was a tactic used by both candidates, in the end just under 10% lead fell through for the final results of the election and Gretchen Whitmer did win. This was the first time that we've had a Democratic candidate win for two terms in a row in a while in Michigan, which was definitely a success for her campaign, but Tudor Dixon put up a strong fight, especially for a candidate who has had very little previous political experience.

Melissa: Now Haley, I want to come to you on the third SHElection that your group was covering, and that was the Arizona race. Tell us a little bit about that one. It ended up being the race of the season in some ways.

Haley: This race was really interesting because, unlike Emma, I didn't have any connections to Arizona. I learned a lot about what is important to the people there, and it changed a lot through the race. In the beginning both candidates, Hobbs and Lake, were focusing a lot on immigration issues and obviously abortion. Then I'd say about three days prior to voting day it seemed like it took a 180. The candidates both were rallying almost primarily on election fraud. Lake, already hinting at the fact that the election was going to be unfair and probably fraudulent, and Hobbs sticking to her message that she's held for a while, that the election is fair and safe and we need to trust in the election and wait.

Both candidates knew that the process of voting in Arizona would take a long time. Today is when Arizona is certifying their results. Clearly it's still relevant and it's really interesting to see, especially for Hobbs, she's currently the Secretary of State so she has such an active role in certifying these elections and yet obviously she's the candidate who won. I think that it'll be interesting to see if any litigation comes out of this, especially in places Cochise County.

Melissa: We got to take a break here. When we get back, you're going to hear more from my students at Wake Forest University and about their viral TikTok moment. It's The Takeaway.

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Melissa: You're back on The Takeaway. I'm Melissa Harris-Perry, and we've been talking to three of my students from Wake Forest University, Emma, Haley, and Cole. As part of a class assignment this semester, they followed three of our takeaway SHElections, those woman versus woman races that we brought you throughout the midterm season. Now, Emma, Haley, and Cole focused on the governor's races in Oregon, Michigan, and Arizona. Part of the assignment required that they design a creative component in addition to their research paper, and that is when it got really interesting. Here's Emma.

Emma: We decided to use a TikTok account as our creative component because as students who are of a younger generation, we're aware of the impact that social media can have on informing people, on people's senses of humor, on how people interact with each other, and we thought that TikTok would be a newer way to showcase what we learned. We made a SHElection account and we began by covering what exactly was a SHElection and then making slightly trendy videos about each race and describing the results and the candidates that were involved in each race. As I'm sure we'll get into a little bit later, we definitely got a lot of attention on one of our videos surrounding the Arizona election results.

Melissa: Cole, talk to me a little bit. I think you were the one responsible for some of the straight-up informational TikToks. Can you share a little bit about what you were going for with those?

Cole: With the topic of our class being girlhood, a lot of my intent there was trying to reach particularly a girl audience and help girls connect with other girls in order to inform themselves and get access to resources which could help them follow these SHElections. A lot of the TikToks that I created were somewhat foundational on what is a SHElection? Why are they important? How can we analyze them? Things of that nature. Then I also did some that were more specific to each race with where can I find resources about candidates or how to vote?

Melissa: Then there came this moment, Haley, I got an email from you that was like, "Hey professor, a thing happened [laughs] and we need a little advice about what to do about it." Haley, talk to me about your mini-viral Arizona race Tiktok.

Haley: I had made a couple of videos and I still believe I was quite a novice. I wasn't expecting this at all when one of my shorter videos that was referring to the fact that Kari Lake was expecting this big red wave to take her to victory and then, surprise, Hobbs wins.

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Melissa: Really quick. Now the video Haley is describing is a five-second meme-like video using a song and the text on the video says, "Kari Lake on her way to accepting the governorship of Arizona after riding the 2022 red wave to victory." But the last second of that clip shows a screenshot of the Associated Press calling the race for Democrat Katie Hobbs. It's a TikTok version of that Dewey Defeats Truman headline moment.

Haley: That video went viral or mini-viral with, I can't even remember how many thousand views. When I woke up that morning, at first I got really excited. I remember Cole and Emma texting, "Hey, look at the account. It's blowing up." Then I read the comments. It was really scary to be honest because I have never been in a position reading such aggressive comments in my life. It was really interesting to see that people were trying to solicit election information, either asking other commenters, "Hey, is this true?" Then commenters would reply sometimes with the truth and sometimes not with the truth at all.

Then other times there were derogatory comments going towards the women on a political basis. What granted me the email that I sent to you was the comments that were coming on the basis of completely their gender. Then also in the back of my mind, I was worried that our account might become a hotspot, if you will, for election fraud, maybe conspiracy theories, things like that. That's when I consulted with Emma and Cole and we decided that it would be a great idea to solicit advice from somebody who could tell us if we were A, promoting conspiracy theories, or B, becoming a lightning rod for hate against women, which is really not what we set out to do.

Melissa: Absolutely. Emma, I want to give both you and Cole an opportunity to also just respond. You get the first text from Haley that's like, "Hey, it's blowing up." Then tell me how you were experiencing, as Haley just did, what those comments were saying.

Emma: I looked on the TikTok account and went in there and I see a bunch of, honestly, very hurtful comments against women and also just very misinformed comments about the American political system in general. I'm scrolling through and my first response is on a platform that is more of a social media platform, a lot of people are garnering their actual education about politics on here instead of how people might have been using something like the television or the newspaper 10 years ago. Then my second response was about all of the extra hate and attention that these women got simply on the basis of their gender.

It is definitely concerning, as three women who potentially would love to go into the political field someday, to think about the fact that we might be hindered or we might be viewed differently just because of our gender and not because our actual ideas that we're bringing to the table.

Cole: In addition to what Emma and Haley said, I think I was definitely blown away by the type of attention it garnered because it truly was, I believe, 200,000 views within 12 hours or so. Haley had posted it in the afternoon and then the next morning we woke up to that. Definitely disheartened by the comments made at women, but it also, I think, had an adverse effect of empowering me in having these conversations and amplifying and studying these SHElections because, unfortunate as it is, our society seems to still be in a place of somewhat fear and feeling threatened by women being in positions of power in politics. I think that's all the more reason that we need to break that and we need to empower women to seek those positions.

Melissa: Emma, Cole, Haley, first of all, thank you for taking this assignment so seriously, for doing such a terrific job on it, and thank you for joining us today on The Takeaway.

Emma: Thank you.

Haley: Thank you.

Cole: Thank you so much. We really appreciate it.

Melissa: Can we get a three-way, "Go Deeks?"

Together: Go Deeks.

Melissa: Of course, we also wanna thank our SHElection partners, the Center for American Women in Politics at Rutgers University, and the Ms. Foundation for Women who help support this effort.

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