Run for the presidency of the United States and win the popular vote by a margin of nearly 3 million people. Although women in u. S. Politics began 2017 with some grim numbers, occupying less than 25 of elected offices at all levels of government, we also witnessed a historic women led outpouring by progressives into the streets in the wake of Donald Trumps inauguration. Since then we have seen a massive upsurge in the number of women who are coming forward to run for Political Office. Since the start of this year, more than 11000 women have approached emilys list to discuss their interest in running for office. Compared to only 900 in the 2016 election cycle. That brings us to the Central Point of todays event. Where do we go from here . How do we make the most of this unique moment of political resistance and progressive renewal and turn womens desire for office into electoral reality . We have to start by getting our facts straight. For too long, the conversation about womens Political Leadership in the u. S. , by which i mean are our striking lack of political parity at all levels of government has been hamstrung by old ideas about what holds women back. We say that people are ready to accept women candidates or that women have less political ambition to run for office. Years of Academic Research and recent events weve all witnessed clearly indicate that these factors do not tell the whole story. In fact, they are a relatively small part of the story. Of why we dont have more women in Political Office when women run, they win. According to the center for american women in politics at rutgers university, women were 28 of Democratic Candidates for the u. S. House in the 2016 general election and 32 of democratic winners. On the senate side, women were 35 of democrat candidates and 42 of when winners. Women arent getting a chance to elect them because women are making their way onto ballots. In the 2014 campaign season, the last year for which a full set of numbers is available, women were only 28 of candidates for federal, state and local office in the United States. That same spring, women made up 29 of elected officials at the federal, state and local level according to the Women Donors Network reflective democracy campaign. Women are not getting onto ballots at the rate they need to in order to achieve political parity because of a whole array of forces having to do with recruitment, fundraising and the support of political power brokers or socalled gatekeepers who are keeping them out. Those forces which favor insiders and incumbents keep women of color more sidelined still. Until we address and change the way our particle power structures are built and operate, we wont be able to meaningfully address how to get women elected and the goal of creating a truly reflective democracy, one that looks like and speaks of and to all of us will remain out of reach. Our panelists today are going to give us the sense of the current landscape and talk about the source of concrete Structural Solutions that can open up the political universe to the most diverse range of women. But first, we are grateful to have with us to wonderful members of congress that we have had the pleasure of working with over the years. Representative Pramila Jayapal is the first indian woman in the house of representatives. She spent the past 20 years working for women immigrant, civil and human rights. We worked with her as state senator and we are excited to welcome her to congress this year. I would also like to introduce congresswoman Nanette Barragan from california. She began her career in the house of representatives. Born in harvard city california, she is the youngest of 11 children raised by immigrants from mexico pitch she beat the odds and put herself through ucla and usc law school. They will be joined by our moderator for the event, Judith Warner who is a senior fellow here at cap action and put out a paper last week, opening the gates, clearing the way for more women to hold Political Office. I urge you to pick up a copy. Please join me in welcoming the congresswoman and judy to the stage. [applause] thank you all for coming out on this morning. Its great to see you here today, and think thank you for being here for this conversation. The report is about opening the gates, looking at the structural barriers that are keeping women off ballots and out of office. Both of you were on ballots and are in office so you are success stories, and i wonder, maybe we will start with the positive, what worked. To what do you ascribe the success that youve had so far. You both have very different stories of what led you into politics, when you look back on your stories as if you were telling them to women who are interested in getting in, what do you see that carries you . For me the first thing was i didnt allow someone to tell me to wait my turn. Thats something we are still happening today. When i got into the race for congress, people literally said someone else was chosen for this seat. Its not your turn, drop out. I think women have to run and most women have to be asked several times to run. Thats the first step, making sure we encourage women to run and for me that was the first step forward. The second thing was fundraisin fundraising. As much as we dont like to hear it, fundraising is necessary to get your message out. Thats the third thing you need. You need a message and you need to be a good candidate. There are different types of candidates and your story and your narrative really helps. I was running out of time we had a very divisive president ial election. Donald trump is dividing this country and was attacking immigrants and women and mexican americans and i fit the category in all three. So to be able to tell my personal story, to say i was the daughter of immigrants from mexico, my mom had only a third grade education and i beat the odds was something that really resonated in my district and give people hope. At a time when there was so much division, people were looking for hope and we provided that. I think, i never thought i would be in elected office so that is the first thing i say to a lot of people. There isnt necessarily a path that everybody has to follow, and for me, i was an activist. I was an immigrant, i came to the United States when i was 16 years old by myself. My parents had about 5000 and they used the whole thing to send me here because they felt this was the place i was going to get the best education and have the most opportunity. There were three professions i was supposed to be, a lawyer, a doctor or an engineer. Politician was not one of them. It never occurred to me that i should or could run and i ended up in the activism world and started what is the largest immigrant Advocacy Group in the states. I decided to run, originally for state senate because i realized after 20 years of trying to get other people to do the things that we felt should be done, we really needed more of us in office and that means more immigrants, more people who reflect the diversity of the country, more women, and so i iran for the state senate and i was the only woman of color in washington state. People think of it as a blue state but not only are we dealing with the peace around gender but word dealing with the peace around race. I think we have to raise that over and over again and so for me, the things that made it successful where that i had a base. I had a really strong base. I had worked with the labor unions, i had work with womens organizations and progressive groups. I had a standing in the immigrant Racial Justice community, and all of those people were excited to see me run. I didnt have to collect names on a rolodex. I had experience working with people. The second thing was that on the fundraising site, i think if you have candidates who are exciting to the base, then people will give money and im not just talking about the big donors, but for me a big part of the success of my campaign was i had 83000 donors across the country and the average contribution was 23. Twentyseven was bernie sanders. We beat him with 23 and we raised almost 3 million. It was an incredibly expensive race for a non swing district race and both nanette and i are in states that are top two states which makes it difficult because the Democratic Party doesnt get in for one candidate or another if youre running against another democrat. Youre really on your own with help from emilys list and other important groups, but i think that was a big part of it, dont think of the way that things have been done as the only way that things can be done. Shake it up in terms of how we organize and how we raise money and the third part of my success was doorknocking. I love it. A lot of candidates dont but to me it is the way, this incredible privilege to spend two or three minutes on the door with someone youve never met and have them tell you their deepest hopes and dreams and fears. We not done 170,000. We made over 280,000 phone calls and there is no question in my mind that is a huge part of why i want. To return for a moment, your opponents were democrats. To return to the issue of being asked, all people need to be asked. Women need to be asked more and they are asked less. Were either of you asked to run, and if so, repeatedly or not. I was asked to run, but not by the powerbrokers. Not by the gatekeepers. I was asked to run by people in my community and leaders that i worked with every day but i was really never i wasnt asked to run by anybody from the Democratic Party. I wasnt asked to run by the people that manage the process. I was asked to run by a member of congress who said i think this is a great opportunity, its an open seat and at first i said thank you but no thank you. The hardest thing for me to get over with how much money i would have to raise because i was a city councilmember and the city was right outside the district so my base wasnt even in the district. I did it the hard way. I didnt have that initial base that my colleague had. I ended up quitting my job, i resigned my seat on the city council to do this fulltime. That was a commitment i made that cost me a lot of money. I had to take out a home equity line, i was in this to win it and i think that made a big difference for me because i had the party against me, the governor, mayor, you name it. It truly was a race where my opponent was handpicked and supposed to win but we ignored that and we went out and raised our money and focused on our message and knocked on the doors. At the end of the day its the voters that decide. You had a very intimidating list of people against you. The party, the lieutenant governor, mayor, 30 Congressional Democrats got behind your opponent and you did it. Clearly this was an example of breaking past the gatekeepers, you had to deal with hostile media as well. Do you think being women of color was behind some of that . Was it just that these were the expected anointed people who had been in the work for a long tim time . What was going on there. We actually had the l. A. Times endorsed me and so the media in that sense was good and that certainly helped and we used it as much as we could. I think that was somewhat of a turning point because we saw somebody who wasnt elected office, someone who had a track record in here you had two independent outlets effectively say my opponent was just good at winning elections which didnt mean he would be better at governing. It was harder as a female candidate because of the questions that you get and youre sometimes held to a different standard. Women still today still contribute less money to women than they do to men so i think there is a challenge there. Certainly for me i think it was a different dynamic. A lot of people had worked with my colleagues, with my opponenopponent and he was promised a seat. He iran in 2012 and was told if you drop out of the race youll be next in line next time. Thats why you had a rare opportunity in my race where there was only one guy planning and after i got in we were the only two who raised money. At the end of the day you had what you sometimes see as stacking the ballot. You had more women being added to the ballot, more people of color, latinos even a number of these people opened a committee to raise money or spend money, it was to split the vote. The strategy worked because in the primary i only had about 21 of the vote and he had 40 of the vote, but when you flip the overall numbers he saw were the latinos were in use are very different race. For me, we had nine people the primary. There was another of the person who ended up in the general with me was in the state legislature wouldve been the youngest member of congress had he been elected and then we had somebody who had been in office since he was 18. He had been part of the Democratic Party machine so he had a number of endorsements. A lot of people stayed out of our race but the media was challenging. I had the opposite situation where the Seattle Times endorsed my opponent, but our progressive paper which is an alternative paper that has just as much weight endorsed me, but not without controversy. The person that i iran against in the general is a good guy. He is a progressive of latino heritage, Lgbt Q Community and so it was challenging. I found the media to be particularly difficult in my race and i found it in subtle ways. It wasnt always open, but there was an article that was done on all three major candidates during the primary and for each of the two male candidates, i was the only woman in the race. They gave a long paragraph about their accomplishments in office. For me, even though i had spent a long time on what i have accomplished, even though i was in the minority in the state senate, when i got to my profile it said she is a debater on the floor which to me says Something Like angry brown woman screams aloud, something not that helpful. I called the reporter and i said im curious what happened and he said i feel so bad but i had a paragraph in their about how unusual it was that you had accomplished what you accomplished in your first turn term and the editors cut it out. That kind of thing happen quite a bit and its probably the first time i felt it so strongly, but it definitely operated anything was race and gender but it was also the fact that ive been a really strong progressive advocate for a long time and ive created challenges for people around things that matter to me. Immigration, gender. And maybe its a measure of opening up. There was a lot of pushback online that was very visible. Did you encounter similarly kind of gendered or racialized language in the media. It was interesting because i do want to distinguish, the editorial side of the times was supportive, but i think youre right, on the news side it was very different. Although my opponent was a city state legislator, hes got way more of the front runner in the accomplishments portion of it. When she mentioned her story, it did ring a bell for me. Its kind of hard to pinpoint what its on, whether it was one of the most powerful state senators or because people thought i had no chance, but you always think about whether race and gender plays a role. My opponent did try to make our campaign about race and so the race issue was always hanging over our race. I started working in politics when i was in college in the Clinton White house, working in the office of africanamerican outreach and then i had a chance to go where i wanted and work with the naacp he on the hill, working on racial and social justice issues. I talk about racial profiling happens to all of us. If we combine together and Work Together we can make progress. Despite my track record, long before i iran for congress, they were trying to make it about race. There was no doubt there was actually a local paper that was very close to my opponent. They actually held a fundraiser for him in their office and they did an endorsement that was all on race and it was just unfortunate. That was probably the toughest part of my campaign because of my track record. It was unfortunate and i think you just have to move away from it because people today will use it to try to divide us and you have to really unite. You mentioned how fundraising can be especially difficult for women and you also mentioned you had a Training Program that was fantastic for that. Im wondering if its worth highlighting Something Like that with something that allowed you to address the structural program. Before i iran for anything, and ive only run twice, i was told emilys list program and i told a friend of mine wherever the next session is happening, im going and it turned out it was all the way in philadelphia, but i got on the plane and went. It was one of the best programs ive ever been to because it was very intense and my favorite part was when they actually make you practice making a call because most candidates dont realize what you really do as a candidate, especially when you dont have a fundraising base is you become a fulltime fundraiser. I was in the call room monday through friday from nine until six. That became my job. I had a little glimpse of that when i did the program and they make you practice and you realize how hard it is to make the call and how hard it is to make the ask. Im independent, i dont like to ask for help so calling and having a conversation is great but getting to the part where you have to ask somebody for money, its not easy. It wasnt for me. I hear its easier for men. Men will just say hey buddy will you give me a thousand dollars. Did you have similarly positive experiences. Because i started my own nonprofit and had to raise tens of millions of dollars over 12 years for the nonprofit i felt like i had done the fundraising thing and i wasnt afraid of it, but the reason i wasnt afraid did transfer over. In the beginning i was uncomfortable because i felt like im asking for money for myself, but within just a week i realized it was actually the same philosophy of my nonprofit which was you should be honored to give me money because im an implement division, and if you believe in that, thats what youre investing in. Youre