Groups on both sides of abortion debate boost their support for dueling female candidates 
 
 By Julian Pecquet - 
 
 The pro-abortion rights group EMILY's List launched an Internet campaign on Tuesday aimed at creating support for the 32 female candidates it is endorsing for state and federal office this year. The campaign, called "Sarah Doesn't Speak for Me," aims to counter former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's (R) high-profile endorsements of "Mama Grizzly" candidates who want to restrict abortion rights. 
 
 At a press conference Tuesday, EMILY's List President Stephanie Schriock called the Mama Grizzlies "backwards-looking." The charge immediately drew reaction from the competing Susan B. Anthony List, which supports abortion opponents for office. 
 
 "EMILY’s List is running scared — and it shows," Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser said in a statement. "Clearly, in this ‘Year of the Pro-Life Woman,’ which Sarah Palin helped make possible, women have found their political voices. Pro-life ‘Mama Grizzlies’ represent the majority of women across the country." 
 
 Schriock called her group's new campaign a "get out the vote hub" and drew particular attention to three key races where its candidates are running against Sarah Palin's endorsees: the California Senate race pitting Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) against Republican Carly Fiorina; the Minnesota House race where Tarryl Clark hopes to unseat Rep. Michele Bachmann (R); and the New Mexico governor's race pitting Democrat Diane Denish against Republican Susana Martinez. 
 
 The EMILY's List campaign features an Internet video of women in bear costumes mocking the "Mama Grizzlies" slogan. The women caution Palin that "there are plenty of Mama Grizzlies out there who would disagree with you." 
 
 EMILY's List says it raised $43 million during the 2007-2008 election cycle and has helped elect 80 pro-abortion-rights women to the U.S. House and 15 to the Senate since 1985. During her press conference, Schriock twice declined to say how much the group was spending on its new campaign. 
 
 The Susan B. Anthony List, for its part, recently launched a bus tour through Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania to build momentum for its endorsed candidates. The group says it has elected 75 pro-life women to the U.S. House of Representatives and seven to the U.S. Senate since 1992. ||||| Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser responded Tuesday, saying, "EMILY's List is running scared -- and it shows. Clearly, in this 'Year of the Pro-Life Woman,' which Sarah Palin helped make possible, women have found their political voices. Pro-life 'Mama Grizzlies' represent the majority of women across the country." 
 
 She added, "We are looking for women leaders who affirm the best in women -- who seek to include rather than exclude the rest of humanity as we find our fulfillment. EMILY's List is busy perpetuating what it purports to abhor: using women candidates with whom they disagree as punching bags." 
 
 Sarah Palin has made "Mama Grizzlies" a campaign theme, but a Democratic women's group is growling back. EMILY's List, a national organization dedicated to electing pro-choice Democratic women to office, announced a new campaign, "Sarah Doesn't Speak for Me," on Monday. Its mission: To fight back against Palin's "radical agenda" and her endorsed candidates.In a press release, the group said: "Sarah Palin has predicted a rising tide of mothers and women voters will support her so-called 'Mama Grizzly' candidates. Today, we call upon women -- and men! -- to let their voices be heard and to reject Palin's reactionary candidates and backward-looking agenda. We're asking Democrats, Independents, and moderate Republicans who have no home -- to join us in our new campaign,."The group planned to announce more details of the campaign Tuesday in Washington, and launched a new website for the campaign."We wanted to respond to Sarah Palin and her candidates' assertions that they were speaking for all women with a community of women who are speaking for themselves," Jes McIntosh of EMILY's List told Politics Daily. "It's a place for them to connect and respond, meet their neighbors and tell what they want out of their government."Palin, one of the most polarizing figures in politics, has spent a large portion of this year traveling the country in support of female GOP candidates, or as she calls them " Mama Grizzlies ." Through her Sarah PAC, Palin has endorsed a host of female candidates including South Carolina gubernatorial candidate Nikki Haley and Susana Martinez in the New Mexico governor's race. Both won. Both are the first GOP women in their states to win their party's nomination.Palin has also had some losses in her endorsements, including Karen Handel, who lost Georgia's gubernatorial nomination earlier this month.In Tuesday's Wyoming primary, Palin endorsed Rita Meyer for governor. On her Facebook page , Palin wrote on July 29: "She may not have millions of dollars to campaign with, but she has enough volunteer human resources and is running her campaign the old fashion way -- grassroots and gritty! Voters know that Rita has a unique blend of steel magnolia and mama grizzly."In July, Sarah PAC released "Mama Grizzlies," a video that consists mostly of audio clips from a speech Palin gave to the anti-abortion rights group, Susan B. Anthony List The new president of EMILY's List, Stephanie Schriock, spoke in Boston last month about Palin. The Boston Globe reported that Schriock said Palin "represents a set of values that are way out of the mainstream and arguably out of the mainstream of the Republican Party."Schriock replaced EMILY's List founder, Ellen Malcolm, earlier this year. The group, which was founded 25 years ago, is trying to lure younger women who may have no memory of life before Roe v. Wade to its pro-choice cause. Palin is now the poster girl for it.So far, Palin hasn't addressed the EMILY's List campaign against her.On Monday afternoon, she told her Facebook followers she would appear that evening on Greta Van Susteren's show on Fox News to discuss energy resources in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, among other topics."I'm traveling with Greta Van Susteren to Alaska's North Slope and ANWR to discuss how developing our resources can contribute to America's energy independence, security, job growth, and economic stability," Palin wrote. "You'll see what the remote 20 million acres of ANWR with its vast oil and gas reserves really looks like (unlike the extreme environmentalists' fundraising pics)." ||||| Democrats used to own the field of women running for higher office. Not anymore. 
 
 Nearly two years after an anticipated gender bounce - with predictions that women in both parties would rush into politics inspired by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sarah Palin - it turns out that the momentum is on the Republican side. If there is a Palin effect, it is not being matched by any Clinton effect at the other end of the ideological spectrum. 
 
 Primaries this week accelerated the shift. Two high-profile Senate races, in Delaware and New Hampshire, yielded female Republican nominees. That makes a total of five Republican women nominated for Senate this cycle. Excluding incumbent senators, Democrats have nominated four, and one of them was Martha Coakley of Massachusetts, who already lost. 
 
 Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said it is "very fair" to argue that the energy for female candidates is trending Republican, a view several other Democratic strategists shared. 
 
 "I've been struck by it," said Dee Dee Myers, a former White House press secretary and author of "Why Women Should Rule the World." 
 
 "All the momentum is on the tea party side, so why wouldn't it also be with the women on the tea party side?" 
 
 Other Democrats dispute the notion of a conservative "year of the woman," saying that the numerical advantage is slight, if it exists at all. They also note that some of the Republican nominees, including Christine O'Donnell of Delaware, are seen as fringe candidates unlikely to win their general elections. 
 
 Stephanie Schriock, the head of Emily's List, which is dedicated to electing pro-choice women, said the "candidates that are making it through these primaries are more and more extreme, radical right-wing folks" who, even though they are female, do not appeal to independent and moderate women. 
 
 As always in politics, it is possible that the frenetic media attention of a few personalities - O'Donnell as well as Nikki Haley of South Carolina several months ago - is masking the underlying reality: No matter what happens, there will still be more Democratic women in office after the midterms, based on the sheer number of incumbents who are likely to win. 
 
 Still, the Republican women are fresh faces. There are many more Democratic women running for the House (87) than Republican ones (47). But Republicans have fielded 30 challengers to run against incumbents, more than the 27 female Democratic challengers, according to new statistics compiled by Jennifer Lawless, director of the Women & Politics Institute at American University. 
 
 The figures suggest that the Democratic stranglehold on electing women that has existed for two decades could start to erode. 
 
 There are now six female governors, divided evenly between the parties. But in the Senate, there are 13 Democratic women and four Republicans, one of whom, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, recently lost her primary. There are 59 Democratic women in the House, compared with 17 Republicans - with a woman, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), leading the chamber. 
 
 The potential for a shift is likeliest at the gubernatorial level. In the current governors' races, the two major parties have each nominated five women. 
 
 But the Republican women appear to have an edge going into November: Three appear to be at least slightly ahead of their Democratic rivals (Haley, Jan Brewer in Arizona and Mary Fallin in Oklahoma), and two of them are in dead heats (Susanna Martinez in New Mexico and Meg Whitman in California). Among Democratic gubernatorial nominees, only one is ahead (Libby Mitchell in Maine), two others are locked in tight battles (Alex Sink in Florida and Diane Denish in New Mexico) and the other two face uphill battles (Jari Askins in Oklahoma and Leslie Petersen in Wyoming). 
 
 Palin has unquestionably played an outsize role in upping the Republican numbers, endorsing several women, including Haley and O'Donnell, who might never have gained sufficient attention otherwise. She has brought to the Republican Party what some members had once complained did not exist: a concerted effort to tap female candidates for promotion and lift them out of obscurity. 
 
 And then there is this: The woman most capable of counteracting a Palin bounce for Democrats - Secretary of State Clinton- is not available to campaign. 
 
 Add to that a general sense of malaise among Democrats, a volatile electorate angry at the status quo and a growing acceptance of female politicians in both parties, and the trend is hardly a surprise, strategists said. 
 
 "Who better to say, 'I'm not part of the establishment' than a Republican woman?" said Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway. "If you want to convey you are not of the firmament of Washington, D.C., and ergo of all the problems and out-of-control spending and corruption, you have to say, 'I'm a Republican woman,' because so few of them have ever been involved at that level."
– Emily's List has drummed up its own group of Mama Grizzlies to counter Sarah Palin. The pro-choice group launched a SarahDoesn'tSpeakforMe website and campaign with this parody video, reports the Hill. The group is hoping to raise funds for candidates it supports, citing three races in particular against Palin-backed opponents: Emily's List is backing Barbara Boxer vs. Carly Fiorina, Tarryl Clark vs. Michele Bachmann, and Diane Denish vs. Susana Martinez in the New Mexico governor's race. Click here for more.