May 2009
TO: Majority Council Members
FROM: Ellen R. Malcolm
DATE: May 15, 2009
Changing America: The 2009 Majority Council conference
What an exhilarating, energizing Majority Council conference! We visited with senators and prospective senators, congresswomen, cabinet secretaries, top White House officials, and esteemed journalists -- and heard from the smart, savvy EMILY’s List staff, who taught us a thing or two about technology. I won’t say I’m ready to Twitter, but at least I now know what it means! If you were there, you know what a great time it was -- and if you weren’t, I hope you’ll join us next year, when we’ll celebrate EMILY’s List’s 25th anniversary.
News from the trail
I am enclosing a truncated transcript of my annual “State of the List” remarks from the conference. EMILY’s List is undergoing a major strategic planning process, and I wanted to brief Majority Council members on our progress, our fiscal situation, and how I envision EMILY’s List’s immediate and long-term future. I hope you will read it and, if you feel so moved, send me your thoughts. We are in the midst of rethinking our future -- reducing costs while maintaining our cutting-edge programs and providing a high level of service for our pro-choice Democratic women candidates. It’s a work in progress, and we need everyone’s input.
Also, please check www.emilyslist.org for the results of the May 19 special primary election to replace Hilda Solis in California’s 32nd congressional district. EMILY’s List candidate Dr. Judy Chu is running a top-notch campaign, racking up major institutional, editorial, and individual endorsements, including the unanimous endorsement of the California Democratic Party; Los Angeles Mayor Anthony Villaraigosa; 11 members of Congress; and members of Hilda Solis’s family (Secretary Solis is not issuing an endorsement). She and her chief opponent, state Senator Gil Cedillo, are neck-and-neck in fundraising, though Judy’s got the advantage in cash-on-hand going into the final days. Judy’s success has made Cedillo a bit desperate, and he’s in full attack mode. Don’t forget to visit the web site for election results on May 19.
In other news, Florida Governor Charlie Crist (R) decided to run for the U.S. Senate, and Alex Sink, the state’s chief financial officer, is running for governor! We are very excited about this fantastic opportunity to put a powerful, qualified woman in charge of one of the nation’s biggest states. Again, check www.emilyslist.org for breaking news on this and other emerging races. That’s it for this month. Enjoy your spring and please, do let me know if you have thoughts about my remarks and EMILY’s List’s future. Send me a letter or email me at information@emilyslist.org.
I feel like I’ve been reborn in politics since the election! Last year we were all so anxious and worried the election wouldn’t go our way. It’s great to be on the other side and see that, not only did we win, but President Barack Obama and the Democrats in Congress are doing so much to turn this country around. And I want to start by thanking you all so much. We took back our government! We did it together, women are in the middle of this mix, and you deserve the credit.
The importance of promoting women
Next year is EMILY’s List’s 25th anniversary, and I hope you all come back and celebrate how the world has changed since 1985. When we started, we didn’t think we were ever going to get a Democratic woman in the U.S. Senate -- and now we have 13 Democratic women in the Senate. When Nancy Pelosi came to the House in 1987 and EMILY’s List started working on House races, there were 12 Democratic women in the entire U.S. House of Representatives. Since then, we’ve added 79 women to the House. And we’ve elected wonderful governors -- including the most recent winner, Bev Perdue, the first woman governor of North Carolina and the first pro-choice Democratic woman governor of a southern state since the late Ann Richards of Texas.
The future of EMILY’s List
In some ways, though, it seems like the more things change, the more they stay the same. I am not sure whether we should be declaring victory or tearing our hair out in frustration that we’re only 17 percent of the Congress. There are still challenges. Some people think it doesn’t matter if we have another woman on the Supreme Court. Well, if it is no longer important to promote the equality of women in our culture, then I think we will never reach equality. We’ll just start sliding backwards. And it’s not just the high level posts that matter -- it’s the deputy directors, those 30-somethings who are taking their first step on the political ladder to work their way up in the executive branch. If women don’t get those less visible positions early in their careers, it’s going to be harder for them to move up through the system. Hilda Solis is a good example: she started working in the White House on Hispanic affairs during the Carter administration. Now she’s the secretary of labor. If we don’t maintain our sensitivity and find a way to talk about this, I am very concerned about the long-term progress of women. It’s important to our country to have our perspectives and our talents and skills and passion for issues, which get left out when there’s just men in the room.
In 2003, we did a strategic plan that focused on the political pieces of EMILY’s List. Now we are looking at our market -- seeking to understand who our target members are and what they need from us, particularly in this changing environment when political information is widely available to everyone. We’re conducting polling and focus groups, reaching out to different market segments to determine where we go from here. We want to articulate what is unique and important about EMILY’s List, so we can continue building a strong community of activists who will make a difference for women.
When I started EMILY’s List in 1985, I had just finished my MBA program and, like any good newly launched MBA, I gave a lot of thought to our market segment and what EMILY’s List should look and sound like. And I pretty much thought the market segment would be women between the ages of 35 and 65 who had been involved in politics and really wanted women to have more political power.
Well, the 35 year-olds are now 60, and the 65 year-olds are now 90, and we have a core group that has matured as we have done this for 25 years. Now we need to go back and identify the next generation of EMILY’s List members. I think it will still be 35 and up, because it’s those women who understand what it is to be a working mom and have begun to get the sense that the workplace is not quite as fair and equal as they had thought. Those women have more resources. They’re the ones who can make the $25, $50, $100 contributions. The real question is, what do these women want? What will motivate them to help women participate in the political process? I hope you’ll come back next year for our 25th anniversary to see what we’ve found. The changes will be subtle. You won’t find a new definition of EMILY’s List. I am absolutely convinced that our mission of supporting pro-choice Democratic women will continue. We need to focus on what makes us unique and what fills the needs of our target audience so they feel like they are making a difference in the political process. In our 2003 political strategic planning process, we set the marker for how we wanted to build this organization. We talked about how we’re going to “win today and build for tomorrow.” We said we were going to take back power and rebuild a progressive America by harnessing the power of women. In the wake of the 2008 campaign, there are obvious and not-so-obvious signs of our imprint on Democrats’ tremendous victories. Clearly we made history with a record number of House victories, and our candidates defeated two Republican senators. But we also learned new things about women voters. The modeling we’ve done of the voter file in New Hampshire and work we did reaching young voters through the internet in North Carolina -- this is groundbreaking work for Democrats. These are new and different techniques, and EMILY’s List is in the lead on them.
Keeping control of the House
So many of the women we helped elect to the House we knew through our Political Opportunity Program, or POP. In 2001, we decided to get more involved at the state level and start training women to run for state and local office to bring a new generation of women into politics. We started working with state legislative caucuses to help Democrats take control of chambers with an eye toward redistricting, which is going to happen after this next election. Since then, we’ve expanded the program. We’ve always trained men in our campaign staff trainings, but we had never trained male candidates. Through POP, we started working with the Democratic Senate caucuses in states like New York to train the guys as well as the women. And lo and behold, in 2008, much to our delight and surprise, Democrats took control of the New York Senate. Now Democrats hold the state House, state Senate, and the governorship -- the three bodies that will oversee redistricting in New York state.
We’ve made long-term investments to advance our motto of “win today and build for tomorrow.” We make sure we take advantage of opportunities and always leave the game after election day with more than what we started with: new talent, newly identified leaders, and a new sense of how we can use the power of women, including women voters, to make a difference.
Having said all that, we face some big challenges in this next election cycle. We were so euphoric -- we took it all back, now let’s enjoy it! But it’s not going to be easy for Democrats to keep control. If Republicans win 40 seats, we lose control of the House. And here’s a sobering fact: in 1994, after Clinton-Gore and the Year of the Woman, Republicans took 54 House seats. They needed 40 to win control, and in 1994 they won 54 House seats.
Electing newcomers
In 2010, we are defending seats, like Betsy Markey’s in Colorado, that are very Republican. Democrats hold congressional seats in 49 districts that voted for John McCain. Democrats hold 83 House seats that in 2004 voted for George W. Bush. When I say these are Republican districts that are tough places for Democrats to win, I mean they are tough because the people in them are going against their usual pattern of behavior. They’re making a conscious decision not to do what they did before. If they revert to their normal behavior, our women are going to have big problems, and Nancy Pelosi will no longer be Speaker of the House. We talked yesterday about what we’ve done to help our incumbent women prepare for re-election. As they get swept up in the pressing debates on the economy and health care, we want them to remain mindful of the challenges they will face getting re-elected. We hired two people to help them, and one of the first things we did was tell them to gather their campaign team and debrief. Figure out what worked and what didn’t. Look at your polling data and election results, and figure out where you are strong and weak in the district. Use this to determine your schedule when you go home -- what grocery stores you should be in, what transit stops to visit. Be strategic about where you are vulnerable and determine the most important places for you to be and the most important groups for you to reach. Include people who are not necessarily traditional Democratic allies -- because if you have to draw people who have historically voted Republican to hold your seat, you’ve got to learn to speak their language and open your mind to what they have to say. It’s one of the things Kirsten Gillibrand did so well to win more than 60 percent of the vote in her congressional district. She went back and listened and responded and explained, and at the end of the day voters had a sense that they knew who she was, they trusted her and liked her, they knew she was smart, and they said, “Okay, we’re going to re-elect her.”
The Democratic Senate majority
In addition to protecting our incumbents, we’re always looking for new opportunities. And I want to talk about primaries. Over the last couple of elections we have had a mission to take back the Congress -- and the political environment, thanks to George W. Bush, made it possible to pick up Republican seats. That is not the normal state of affairs, and now we’re going to revert to the more traditional system. If you go back and look, you’ll find that 98 to 99 percent of members of Congress who run for re-election win. This is why only 17 percent of the House is women. It is virtually impossible in a normal political environment to defeat an incumbent. And therefore, as you’ve heard me say over and over, we look for open seats -- particularly Democratic open seats where we have a realistic chance of putting a newcomer into office. These are the best opportunities to add new women to Congress. A huge percentage of the 79 women we’ve elected to the House are there because we helped them win a primary. It’s a critical piece of the political equation. In the Senate, Barbara Boxer, Patty Murray, and Barbara Mikulski all had competitive primaries, and it’s because we helped them win that they are in office today. We have got to win primaries.
Over the past few elections, it’s been all about taking back the Congress. But realistically, there simply aren’t that many Republican seats left for us to win. So now we’ve got to start focusing on those primaries. If we don’t, we will not be able to increase the percentage of women in office. It’s important to realize this as you think about where you want to make a difference with your political money.
Now I want to talk about the Senate. I think [Pennsylvania Senator] Arlen Specter’s switch to the Democrats is actually somewhat misleading. I’m not sure we are in any better position when it comes to ending the filibuster. You know what a pain in the neck he was for Republicans -- they couldn’t depend on him, he voted half the time with Republicans, half with Democrats. Now he’s a Democrat; half the time he’ll vote with us, half the time he’ll vote with Republicans. This is not the panacea to ending the filibuster by having those 60 cloture votes. And it is an expensive, weighty proposition to go through the compromises you need to get to 60 votes. On the economic stimulus package, it cost almost $100 billion in cuts to win the votes of Specter and [Maine Senators] Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.
Our goal in this election is to try to take more Republican Senate seats, and that’s why Robin Carnahan is one of the most important races we’re working on right now.
Winning in the states
Another part of this equation is holding onto the seats we have, and that’s why Kirsten Gillibrand’s race is so important. I talked yesterday about my concern that Republicans will win if there is a primary. We know that Congressman Steve Israel is thinking about running in the primary against Kirsten. (By the way, there’s all this buzz that she’s not progressive; if you look at their party unity scores, they are basically the same. One has voted 93 percent with the Democrats, and the other has voted 90 percent of the time with the Democrats. So if anyone tells you Steve Israel is progressive and Kirsten Gillibrand isn’t, it’s just not true.) Here is my concern. This is a September primary -- very late. Republican Congressman Peter King has looked at this situation and I suspect if there’s a primary, he’ll get in. He knows he can’t win if it’s just Kirsten -- but if there’s a primary and Democrats spend millions beating each other up until September, then Republicans will seize this opportunity to pick up a Senate seat. I want Kirsten to win because I think she is and will be a fabulous senator. She’s extremely smart, she’s young, I’ve seen her grow through her House races in unbelievable ways, and I think she’d be the strongest Democrat -- because winning in New York isn’t just Manhattan, it’s statewide, and she knows how to do that. But I am also very concerned about the potential of losing that Senate seat and going backwards.
There are a couple other Senate races we’re monitoring. Jennifer Brunner, the secretary of state in Ohio, has a primary race against the lieutenant governor, a tough primary followed by a tough general. In Illinois, Roland Burris isn’t quite what folks had in mind for their senator. Congresswoman Jan Schakowsky is considering running, and there’s another woman, Cheryle Jackson, the head of the Urban League, looking at the race. The strongest in polling is Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who is in the wonderful position of leading in both the Senate and governor’s race. If I had to bet, I’d say she’ll run for governor, but clearly if she gets into the Senate race she’s got a big lead there.
Why women?
We’ve been so focused on taking back Congress that we always have to remind ourselves how important it is to have women and Democratic leaders in the states. I watched with some horror as [Louisiana Governor] Bobby Jindal did his response [to the president’s first speech to Congress]. Then Governor Mark Sanford in South Carolina started talking about how he wouldn’t take the stimulus money because he didn’t want to give unemployment to out-of-work folks. And I thought, what a great reminder of why it matters who is running the states. As we rebuild a progressive America, we have progressive leaders as governors and progressive control of state legislatures. We saw Janet Napolitano when she was governor of Arizona, and Jennifer Granholm and Chris Gregoire and Kathleen Sebelius maintain their progressive priorities as they were forced to make massive budget cuts -- protecting the programs that are important to low-income people and to children, like health care and education. It’s very important to have women there making tough decisions and taking on the right wing in the states. Janet vetoed something like 160 Republican bills, and a lot were on abortion and other things we really care about. The good news is that, thanks to our work with POP, we have a whole crew of qualified women looking at these 36 governor races. We have great women like Diane Denish, lieutenant governor of New Mexico, and Deb Markowitz, secretary of state of Vermont, and we’re working on recruiting a lot more women to run. I hope Alex Sink will get into the race in Florida [since the conference, Sink announced she is running], and I mentioned Lisa Madigan, who I think will run for governor of Illinois. Now, just imagine the impact of having a woman governor of Florida and a woman governor of Illinois, two of the most populous states in the country. Those are big, visible, national positions!
The governors who are elected in 2010 will work with state legislatures to redraw the state and congressional district lines in most states -- not in all of them, some states have different systems. So electing women leaders in the states and helping Democrats take control of legislatures with women are big pieces of business for our future.
- If you want to deal with global warming and energy independence, you should know that Democratic women have an average 92.5 percent approval rating from the League of Conservation Voters for their 2007 votes on the environment. Democratic men have a 79.6 percent average. Women are better on the environment.
- If you care about workplace fairness and equality, you should know that when the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) did their 2006 scorecard, Democratic women average 92.9 percent approval for their voting records. Democratic men, 85.8 percent.
- And if you care about women’s health and reproductive issues and protecting a woman’s right to choose, you should know that, according to Planned Parenthood, in 2006 Democratic women had a 98.8 percent record on average; Democratic men, 77.4 percent.
Well, we took our country back and now we have to repair it. As Robin Carnahan said last night, we have to solve problems. And it is daunting. Looking at the level of activity on the swine flu scare, it reminds us how little the Bush administration did on anything. We have a lot to do, and right now we have the political will to do it. The president is doing a phenomenal job moving things forward, but we have a lot to do to repair the country. And we need women if we are going to rebuild a progressive America. Women have very different perspectives and life experiences. Women make sure when the budget has to be cut to protect those least likely to weather the storm.
The Republican strategy
We need more women in office because they are flat-out more progressive. We went back and looked at recent legislative scorecards of our allied progressive organizations to see if there’s a difference, and here’s something to think about:
Women are more progressive. And if we want to rebuild a progressive America, we need more women in office.
You may think we’re in the catbird seat, but the Republicans are not gone, they are not done, and they are not powerless. They have a simple strategy. The current political environment is for change. Voters said, “We have to do something different.” And what Republicans will do is delay, confuse, obfuscate, say to the American people, “The message of change was a sham. Nothing has changed.” They did it after 1992. Democrats couldn’t get health care passed, and they went to voters and said, “It didn’t work, there is no change, it was a sham.” And Democratic voters, particularly women, stayed home. There was no wholesale move to Republicans in 1994 -- what happened is that many voters who lifted Democrats to victory in 1992 said, “I’m really disappointed. They said they would fix things, but they haven’t fixed anything, I’m not going to bother to vote.”
Sixteen million women who voted in 1992 stayed home in 1994. And that is why Democrats lost control of the Congress. We lost 54 House seats, eight senate seats -- because people couldn’t see the change that was promised to them.
Republicans will try to derail and slow things down in the House and use the filibuster and the right-wing attack machine, and the message on Fox News will be, “They aren’t getting anything done, they’re no different than any other politician, they don’t care about you, nothing is going to change.”
Everything I’ve read says that as the economy starts to recover, first the stock market will come back, then unemployment will begin to fall. But there will be a lag time before people start hiring and jobs start coming back. We’ve seen already that the market is starting to go back up -- but the labor stats came out today and we lost another 593,000 jobs. Unemployment is at 8.9 percent. Imagine the message if that continues up to November 2010. “They said they were going to change things. The rich are getting richer, market is going up, but do you see new jobs?” In that context, what we do with WOMEN VOTE! is the most important piece of this election. We took WOMEN VOTE! national after the 1994 election because Mary Beth Cahill noticed that the biggest problem wasn’t angry white men, as the media was reporting -- the big problem was those 16 million women who stayed home, many of them working-class women without college degrees. So we began WOMEN VOTE! to connect women to the political process and show them that what’s happening in Washington matters to them and their families.
We’ve learned a lot since then about motivating women voters. But now we have some real challenges. We did well in 2008 because of those young voters. In North Carolina, we convinced them that it’s not just about electing Barack Obama president -- it’s also about electing Kay Hagan to the Senate and Bev Perdue as governor. Now we have to figure out how to get them back. Yes, they voted in 2008, but every piece of evidence we had up until then showed that they’re usually pretty checked out of the political process. How do we keep them connected so they vote again in a nonpresidential election? How do we get those noncollege women -- who, if they were having a hard time in 1994, are really in crisis in 2009 -- how do we reach them and convince them that they have to continue this fight?
We have a tremendous amount of work. We are committed to helping Barack Obama turn this country around. We’ve taken back political power, but this isn’t going to change in two years or four or six. We need eight years of Barack Obama in the White House and Democratic control of Congress and progressive women running states as governors and control of legislatures during redistricting -- because that is the only way we can continue to rebuild a progressive America.
I want to thank you for all you’ve done to help us take back the country. Because of your support, we have found ways to win today and build for tomorrow. But we need you again. I urge you to think about what else you can do. Right now, every dollar you give to EMILY’s List, particularly in light of the economy, is going to have more impact.
I want to come back for our 25th anniversary next year and celebrate women’s growing participation in the political process as candidates, as campaign professionals, as donors, and as voters -- because it’s our country and we’re going to make it what we want. Thank you all very much!