Spreading the Dough (Page 2)

The trifecta of victories in Wisconsin illustrates a favorite point for EMILY's List--that by working together, women can achieve more in politics than they thought possible. But the broader lesson is about taking back the country from the right. Especially since 2004, progressives have been talking about the need to replicate the right-wing takeover of American politics. After Barry Goldwater's crushing defeat in 1964, the hard right began a long march to power, taking over local school boards and Republican Party machinery, grooming candidates for higher office, building networks, coordinating strategy.

How can the left begin its march back to power? EMILY's List has a big piece of the answer. The group is doing work long neglected by both the Democratic Party and progressive groups: training and funding political newcomers to get them into office, then helping them move up.

From the beginning, women's status as political outsiders spurred EMILY's List's entrepreneurial approach. When it started in 1985, at a "Rolodex party" in founder Ellen Malcolm's basement, the goal was to help Maryland's Barbara Mikulski become the first Democratic woman to win a Senate election (other Democratic women had served by appointment). Malcolm's innovation was "bundling" contributions--getting members to write small checks to individual candidates, which the group then pools for maximum impact. Two decades later, there are more than 100,000 members who write checks averaging $93 each election year to candidates EMILY's List supports.

The group's mission has evolved with the political landscape. In the 1990s EMILY's List began training candidates. When the candidates had trouble finding professional fundraisers and staff, EMILY's List began training them, too. By 1995 the PAC had launched its Women Vote! project, which last year put $10 million into voter mobilization. In 2001, when women's representation in state government had begun to decline for the first time, EMILY's List began reaching "down ballot" to recruit and train candidates for state offices. Its Political Opportunity Program has so far trained 3,200 women, helping 217 get elected to statewide office in twenty-nine states.

Now Karen White, EMILY's List's political director, is in the middle of a ten-year plan to help the Democrats control as many state legislatures and governor's mansions as possible in time for Congressional redistricting after the 2010 Census. (With an eye on redistricting, the group is now putting male incumbents in New York through its patented training.) "In 2004 all people could talk about was the presidential election," says White. "But we were continuing to build a farm team." In five states where legislative chambers flipped from Republican to Democratic control in 2004, EMILY's List played a pivotal role--nowhere more than in Colorado. After John Kerry's campaign pulled out, judging the state a lost cause, EMILY's List continued to pour resources into the races of thirteen women. All thirteen won, as both houses went Democratic. For the first time, both the Colorado speaker pro tempore of the House and the president of the Senate are women.

EMILY's List training sessions are the heart of its effort to build its "farm team," combining the inspirational power of a consciousness-raising group with professional nuts-and-bolts instruction. At a recent candidate training session in Stevens Point, Wisconsin, regional director Tanya Bjork offered EMILY's List's standard uplifting slogan, "When Women Run, Women Win." Bjork cited a Brown University study showing that men are almost twice as likely than women to consider themselves "highly qualified" for office--even though women candidates do just as well as men at the polls.

One of the featured speakers was the charismatic new state senator from Milwaukee, Lena Taylor--Gwen Moore's successor. At a Friday evening dinner, she grasped the hand of Ame Grail, a realtor from Door County, a tourist mecca in northern Wisconsin. Grail is brand-new to politics, getting ready to run for State Assembly because she is concerned about the environment. "There is so much E. coli on the beaches, our children can't swim," she said. "I commend your courage!" Taylor told Grail. "I and others will be there for you when you run. You go through a lot and have to know you have a sisterhood of elected officials."

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