Good morning morning. Welcome to the center for American Progress action fund. I am the executive and really thank you so much for joining us today for an exciting event on womens leadership. We have arrived at a moment that has the potential to be a pivotal time for women in american politics. In the past six months we have had the first female candidate from a Major Political party run for the presidency of the United States and win the popular vote by a margin of nearly 3 million people. With some pretty grim numbers occupying less than 25 of elected offices at all levels of government. We witnesses a women led of outpour and since then, we have seen a massive up surge in the number of women who were coming forward to run for Political Office. More than 11,000 women have approached emilys list to discuss their interest in running for office compared to only 900 in the 2016 election cycle. Where do we go from here . How do we make the most of these unique moment of political resistance and progressive renewal. We have to start by getting our facts straight. For two long, the conversation about womens Political Leadership in the u. S. By which i mean our striking lack of politic Political Parody of all levels of government. We say that people arent ready to accept women candidates or that women have less political ambition to run for office. But years of Academic Research in recent events we have witnessed that these factors do not tell the whole story. They are a retively small part of the story. According to the center of american women in politics, women were tray house in the 2016 general election. On the senate side, women were 31 of Democratic Candidates in the november election and 42 of winners. The problem isnt that voters wont elect women, it is that they are not getting a chance to elect them. In the 2014 campaign season, the last year for which a full set of numbers are available, women were only 28 of candidates for federal, state and local office in the United States. That same spring women made up of 29 of the federal officials. Women are not getting ong to ballots at the rate they need to because of a whole array of forces having to do with recruitment, fund raising, and socalled gate keepers keeping them out. Until we address and change the way our political 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 panelist today are going to give us a sense of the current landscape and talk about the course of concrete Political Solutions that can open up the universe to a diverse range of women. We are grateful to have with us two wonderful members of congress. The first Indian American woman in the house of representatives. She has spent the last 20 years working for womens immigrants and civil rights. We are so excited to welcome her to congress this year. I would like to introduce congressman nannette from california, she too began her career this year in the house of representatives. Born in california, she is the youngest of 11 children raised by immigrants from mexico. They will be joined by our moderator Judith Warner who is a senior fellow here at cap action and put out a paper last week, opening the gates urge you all to pick up a copy. So please join me in welcoming the Congress Women and judy to the stage. [ applause ] thank you all for coming out on this gray morning. It is great to see you all today. Thank you both for being here for this conversation. I really appreciate it. The report as was said is about opening the gates, looking at the structural barriers that are keeping women off ballots and out of office. So both of you were on ballots and are in office. So success stories. So we will start with the positive. To what do you ascribe the success that you have had so far. You both have different stories of what led you into politics. When you look back on your stories and if you were going to tell them to women who were interested in getting in, what do you see that carried you . So for me, the first thing was i didnt allow somebody to tell me to wait my turn because that is something that we are still happening today. When i got into the raise for congress, people called and said somebody else was chosen for the seat. It is not your turn. Drop out. So women have to run and most women have to be asked seven times to run. So that is the first step. Making sure we encourage women to run. And for me, that was the first step forward. The second thing was fund raising. As much as we dont like to hear it, fund raising is necessary to get your message out and that is the third thing you need. You need a message. And you need to be a good candidate. Jo your story and your narrative helps. I was running at a time of a decisive president ial election. Attacking women and immigrants and mexicanamericans. And i fit the category in all three. So to tell my personal story. I beat the odds with something that really resonated in my district and gave people hope. So at a time when there was so much division, people were looking for hope and we provided that. Well, i think you know, i never thought i would be in elected office. So that is the first thing that i say to a lot of people, there isnt necessarily say path that everybody has to follow and for me, i was an activist. First of all, i was an immigrant. I came to the United States when i was 16years old by myself. My parents used their bank account to send me here because they felt this is the best place to get an education. Three professions that i was supposed to be. A lawyer, a doctor, or an engineer. So politician was not one of them. And i ended up in the activism world and started the largest women advocacy in the United States. And i decided to run originally for the state snaeenate because realized after 20 years to get other people that we felt should be done, we needed more of us in office. More of us means more immigrants, more people who reflect the diversity of the country. More women. So i ran for state senate and i was the only woman of color. Not only are we dealing with the piece around gender, but the piece around race. So we have to raise that over and over again. So for me, the things that made it successful, were number one, i had a base. I had a really strong base. I worked with all the labor unions and all the women organizations, all the progressive groups. A real standing in the immigrant Racial Justice communities. And all of those people were excitesed to see me run. So i had lived experience of working with people. And the second thing was that on the fund raising side, i think if you have candidates who are exciting to the base, then people will give money. And i am not just talking about the big donors, but for me, a big part of my success of my campaign is i had 8,000 donors across the country. And we raised almost 3 million. It was an incredibly expensive race for a nonswing district state. And we are both in a for one candidate or another if you are running against another democrat. So you are really on your own with help from emilys list and other important groups. But i think that was an important part of it too was dont think about the way that things have been done as the only way things can be done. Lets shake it up in terms of how we organize and how we raise money and the third part of my success was door knocking. I love it. A lot of candidates dont. But to me, it is this incredible privilege to spend two or three minutes on the door with somebody you have never met and have them tell you their deepest hopes and dreams and fears. So we knocked on 170,00 just to run for a moment to the uniqueness of your states, your opponents were democrats all the way through. And to run to that issue of being asked, all people need to be asked more or less to run. Women need to be asked more and are i was asked to run and not by the power brokers. Not by the gate keepers. I was asked to run by people in my community and by leaders that i worked with every day but i dont think i was asked to run by anybody from the Democratic Party. I dont think i was asked to run by sort of the people that managed the process. I was asked to run by members of congress. And at first i said thank you but no thank you. The hardest thing for me was to get over how much money i had to raise. And so my base wasnt even in the district. And i did it the hard way. I didnt have the initial base that my colleague had. I ended up quitting my job a year and a half out. To do this follow time. And that was a commitment that i made that cost me a lot of money. I had to go through my savings. I am single. I had to take out a home equity line. So i was in it to win it. And i think that made the big differentiati difference for me. I had the party against me. We ignored all of it and did as my colleague mentioned. You go out and raise your money and focus on your message and knock on the doors. And at the end of the day, it is going to be the voter who are going to decide. You had an intimidating list of people arrayed against you. The party, the lieutenant governor, the mayor. And you did it. Clearly, this was an example of breaking past the gate keepers. You had to deal with a hostile media as well. Do you think that being women, being women of color was behind some of that . Was it just that these were the expected anointed people who had been in the works for a long time, your opponents . What was going on there. We had the la times endorse me. So the media helped me. And we used it as much as we could and that was somewhat of a turning point because we saw someone who wasnt elected office and here you had two independent outlets say my opponent is good at winning elections but doesnt mean is going to be good at governor. It is hard for a female candidate because the questions you get sometimes you are set at a different standard. Women contribute less money to women than they do to men sometimes. So there is a challenge there. For me, it was a different dynamic. That a lot of people had worked with my opponent. And he was promised the seat. He ran for the seat in 2012 and was told if you drop out of the race, you will be next in line next time. That is why you had a rare opportunity in my race where there was only one guy really running. And after i got in, we were the only two who had raised any real money. At the end of the day, you had sometimes what you see is stacking of ballots. You had more women being added to the ballot. More people of color. Latino sounding names. Even though none of these people opened a committee to raise money or spend money, it was nearly to split the vote. And 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 looked at the overall numbers you see where the women were when you combined them. You saw a very different race. Congresswoman. I think for me, we had nine people in the primary. There were, there was another, the person who ended up in the general with me was in the stat and then we had somebody who had been in office since he was like 18 or something. 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, too. But the media was challenging. I had sort of the opposite situation where the Seattle Times actually endorsed my opponent. But our progressive paper, the stranger, which is an alternative paper that probably has just as much weight as the Seattle Times, endorsed me. But not without controversy. Because the person that i ran against in the general is a good guy. Hes a progressive, of latino heritage. Lgbtq community. And so it was challenging. I found the media, though, to be particularly difficult in my race. 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. For each of the two male candidates, they gave a long paragraph about their accomplishments in office. And for me, even though i had spent a long time on what i accomplished even though i was in the minority in the state senate in just the first term, when it got to my profile, it said shes a vociferous debater on the floor, which to me is a brown woman says angry brown woman screams loud, something not that helpful. And so i called a reporter and said, im really curious what happened. And he said, congresswoman, or state senator at the time, i feel so bad, but i had a paragraph in there about how unusual it was that you had accomplished what you had accomplished in your first term, and the editors cut it out. So that kind of thing happened quite a bit, and its probably the first time i felt it so strongly. But it definitely operated. And i think it was both race and gender. But it was also the fact that i have been a really strong progressive advocate for a long time and i have created challenges for people around things that matter to me. Immigration, gender, racial equity. And maybe its a measure of the sort of opening up, the democratatizing of the media that were in now. There was a lot of pushback online that was very visible and vocal. Did you encounter similarly kind of gender or racialized language in the media . It was interesting because i do want to distinguish, the editorial side of the times was supportive. On the news side, it was very different. Although my opponent was a sitting state legislator, he got way more of the frontrunner and the accomplishments portion of it. So when she mentioned her story, it did ring a bell for me. And its kind of hard to pinpoint what its on in my race, whether its because he was one of the most powerful state senators in california, and that could have been it. It could have been because people thought i had no chance. But you know, you always certainly 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, and it was just a terrible thing because i started working in politics when i was in college, in the Clinton White house, working in the office of africanamerican outreach. Then i had a chance to go anywhere i wanted and went to work with the naacp on the hill, working on racial and social justice issues because i talk about the fact that racial profiling is happening to all of us. If we combine together, work together, were way more likely to make progress. Yet, despite my track record, long before i ran for congress, was trying to make it about race. So there was no doubt there was actually a paper, 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 along race. And it was just unfortunate. That was probably the toughest part of my campaign. Because of my track record. And it was unfortunate. I think we just have to move away from that because people today will use it to try to divide us. And we have to really unite. You mentioned how fundraising can be especially difficult for women. You also just mentioned beforehand that you had a Training Program that was fantastic for that. Im wondering if its worth highlighting Something Like that with sort of something structural that allows you to address the structural problems and gave you help. Both of you had those experiences with programs that were specifically helpful. Before i ran for anything, and i have only run twice, once for city council and once for congress, i was told that emilys list program, their political opportunity program, a oneday program. I told a friend of mine, wherever the next session is happening, im going to it. It turned out it was all the way in philadelphia. I got into a plane and went. It was one of the best programs i had ever been to because it was very intense, and my favorite part of it 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 9 00 to 6 00. That became my job. And i had little glimpse of that when i did the program, and they make you practice. You realize how hard it is to make the call and how hard it is really to make the ask. Because im independent, i dont usually like to ask for help. So calling and having a conversation is great. But then getting to the part where you have to ask somebody for money, its not easy. Its not easy. It wasnt for me. I hear its easier for men. Men will just say, hey, buddy, will you just give me 1,000 . It was a very different dynamic. Its vulnerability. Did you have similarly positive experiences . You know, because i was i started my own nonprofit and had to raise tens of millions of dollars over 12 years for that nonprofit, i felt like i had done the fundraising thing. I wasnt afraid of it, but the reason i wasnt afraid of it did transfer over. In the beginning, i was uncomfortable because i felt like, wait, im asking for money for myself, but within just a week, i realized it was actually the same philosophy as my nonprofit, which was, hey, you should be honored to give me money because im going to implement a vision. If you believe in that vision, thats what youre investing in. Youre not giving money to me. Youre giving money to the vision. The minute i had that in my head, it became easier. I think the only thing that i still find hard sometimes is in every fundraiser will tell you this, you have to leave a gap when you ask the question. You have to allow for people to take in that question and then answer. And theres this uncomfortable set of moments that feels like its ten minutes, but its actually probably three seconds. Where you dont say anything. You have made your ask. May i have 5,400, please . You have made your ask, and you wait. And then that allows somebody to come in. If you try to fill that space, you really undermine your own fundraising because you dont give the opportunity for somebody. But i do think, you know, with the greatest of humility to be able to say this is a chance to invest in our vision, and thats what youre selling, if you will, what youre offering. Thats the way i try to help candidates who have never done fundraising before to think about it, because i think t