Chapter 1

Getting Started

What You Need to Know Before You Start and What You Can Learn on the Way

If a journey of one thousand miles starts with a single step, the journey to elected office starts with a single decision. That first step is deciding you are going to run for office. So, let's talk about how to make that decision.

How many of you have looked at a job description and thought, I am not qualified because I don't have one hundred percent of the qualifications listed? Come on, be honest. I am the president of the nation's largest resource for women in politics and even I did it with this job before I threw my hat in the ring. I saw what EMILY's List was looking for and I didn't have all the qualifications. I had been the staffer behind the powerful leader. I had been the finance director, the campaign manager, and the chief of staff, but I had never been the one out front. EMILY's List was looking for a strategist (check) who could raise money (check) and be the head spokesperson with the press and public (UGH-PRESS???). I was so afraid to talk to the press I almost didn't apply for the job.

But that would have been the wrong decision. Because whether you already have all of the qualifications is the wrong question. The right question is whether you are ready and willing to learn on the job. To make the decision to run and take that jump, the first step is to convince yourself that you can do it. You have so much to bring to the table, and you can learn the rest. More on that later. PS: I talk to the press quite a bit now and I am pretty good at it most of the time.

At EMILY's List, we spend a lot of time convincing women to run for office. Recruiting is one of my favorite parts of the job and something we do a lot of. My team and I have talked to thousands of women around the country in the last ten years. We've heard every concern and excuse a potential candidate might have for not running. Some of those concerns are very valid, and we will talk about those in the next chapter. But most excuses are just that-excuses, masking a lack of confidence.

I assumed for a long time that there was a magic gene that candidates had, one that gave them the underlying confidence to run for office. I figured most elected officials had been dreaming of running since they were kids. I thought that some people were just made to do it. There are, after all, people who are naturally gifted at public speaking, great debaters, policy wonks, people who are effortlessly charismatic, charming, and well connected. I assumed these people with the innate gifts became the candidates, because they knew how to do it, because they were somehow meant to run.

I suspect we've all been around people like this. They are typically men, and they carry themselves in a way that makes it easy to assume there is a secret playbook the rest of us don't have access to. You know who I'm talking about. The person in the meeting whose confident answer makes you believe yours must be wrong, despite the research you've done and the facts backing you up. The coworker who offers opinion as fact. The person who has been on the job far less time than you but gives off the vibe of having mastered the work years ago. Clearly, they know something we don't, right?

Wrong.

What I've learned in years of doing campaigns, and what I've tried to share with the women who doubt their abilities, is that there is no secret playbook or magic gene. There's no mystery to it. There's just a hunger to learn what you need to know and a willingness to do the hard work of building confidence in yourself. It can still feel impossible. And there's a good reason why.

For one, the Old Boys' Club is a very real thing. The smoke-filled back rooms are still around, albeit with less smoke and perhaps just a little more diversity than in days of old. In politics and campaigns, as in nearly everything, there's an "establishment" that the rest of us are up against. Those are the people who decide who gets the promotions, the best jobs and projects, the opportunities to chase bigger and better things. The establishment is exactly what we are challenging, thanks to decades of knocking down the door of that smoke-filled room and helping women carry in their own chairs when they are told there's no room at the table.

Today, I work with party leaders to recruit women and help more of them achieve victory every day. I'm proud to say it's a very different place from where we started.

EMILY's List was created thirty-five years ago to tear down the Democratic establishment's Old Boys' Club. As of 1984, no Democratic woman had ever been elected to the Senate in her own right. My friend and Minnesota Senator Tina Smith's favorite fun fact: In the history of the United States, there have been almost as many men named Charles elected to the Senate as there have been women.

EMILY's List founder, Ellen Malcolm, had watched as Harriett Woods ran a great race for a United States Senate seat in Missouri in 1982 despite being dismissed by the Democratic establishment as not being a viable candidate. They told her she would never be able to raise enough money to run a successful campaign. Of course, the fact that the party wouldn't support her further undercut her ability to raise money and meant she had to pull her ads off the air at a key moment. In the end, even with the deck stacked firmly against her, Woods lost by less than two points.

With that loss, Ellen had had enough. She pulled together a group of her women friends who were working across the political field and were equally frustrated by the lack of electoral success by women. Ellen knew that the core of the problem was that the party didn't believe women candidates could win elections. In Washington, the one thing above all that catches people's notice is money-so Ellen knew what women needed to be taken seriously: a funding source.

Of course, this was unheard of at the time. Women donors were few and far between. It was a time when the wealth held by women was significantly less than it is today-and the wealth gap between men and women is still significant. Women in office were also, sadly, few and far between, with only twenty-four women in Congress total, in both houses and from both parties. But Ellen and her friends were determined to change things for women running for office.

They didn't have all the answers or all the power, so they used what they did have access to-time, contacts, and a willingness to help-and they went to work. Armed with their Rolodexes, they sat together in Ellen's basement and worked their own networks. They each wrote their friends, families, and like-minded contacts, asking them to give $100 to this movement to elect more women and $100 each to the first two candidates: Barbara Mikulski, for her 1986 Senate run in Maryland, and Harriett Woods, running for a second time in Missouri. Those friends of Ellen's friends sent checks that were then bundled together for both campaigns, boosting their finances and their chances. Though Woods lost, this effort ultimately helped Barbara Mikulski in Maryland become the first Democratic woman elected to the Senate in her own right. She became the longest-serving woman in the Senate.

Ellen decided to name that effort EMILY's List because she knew that Early Money Is Like Yeast: It makes the dough rise. Yes, we are named after a baking joke. Our first logos were based on the Fleischmann yeast packet.

In the thirty-five years since that first success, we've helped elect hundreds of women and hopefully begun to neutralize the boys' club a bit. More and more often, the Democratic establishment sees the value in nominating and running women, often working hand in hand with EMILY's List. Though we don't always agree and there are many times we have to use our power to get women through the process, it's definitely progress. We know that every woman who runs makes it a bit easier for the next one-and we know that we get better government with more women involved. Challenges still remain, but every election cycle it gets better.

And yet, these are things we still hear all the time: It's hard for women to run. The establishment is against me. They tell me it's not my turn. I've never done it before. I just can't do it.

Time and again, our response is the same: Yes, you can.

The so-called establishment is not the be-all and end-all in this process. All you need to be a good candidate is integrity, passion, energy, commitment, and a true willingness to work hard, learn, and ask for help. If you have a passion for your community and want to make change, you should figure out which elected office has the authority to make that change and run for it. Your voice and your individual perspective are what we need in office. We have had nearly 250 years of white men, for the most part, running our government at all levels, but no more. If you know why you are running, and you are willing to work really hard, then you are the woman for the job.

I know what you're thinking: "But, Stephanie, I don't know how to get started. It's too much."

To that I say, one thing at a time. First, decide to run, and trust me that the rest, you can learn. Much of becoming a candidate or starting that new career is about on-the-job training. It takes research, work, lots of questions, and probably some missteps. But you don't need to know how to do all of this before you decide to run.

This isn't rocket science. It's about learning the right pieces and how to put them together. Everything you need to know to build a successful campaign is teachable. Are you convinced yet? Stick around and let me prove it to you.

My team and I have had this conversation with more potential candidates than we can count. We've given them plans and training and materials, but too often, they're doubting the wrong thing. They're worried about whether they have it within themselves simply because they've never done it before. But what we know, proven through our work with literally thousands of success stories, is that anyone can become a great candidate.

So, don't decide not to take that next step because you don't know how you are going to do all aspects of the job. Decide to take on the job and let me help you figure out the rest.

Of course, I don't promise our candidates they will win every race or secure every nomination. There are so many variables that go into elections that are out of your control. And the sad truth is, the best candidate running the best campaign won't win every time. What we can promise is that if you do the work and you have the following traits, you can put yourself in the best position possible to make change in your community. That is true for candidates. That is true for applying for any promotion. That is just true for all of us. And the journey will change your life for the better.

So, let's talk in more detail about what candidates do need.

Integrity

I like quoting the many women we've helped elect over the years, but I'll make an exception for this gem from Oprah Winfrey: "Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobody's going to know whether you did it or not."

Being a good leader means being honest and being driven by moral principles and values. It means being willing to stand up for what's right, even if it's difficult, even when no one's watching or giving you credit. Especially when no one's watching or giving you credit. It means everything from following the law to setting an example for the people around you. In a political system that is far from perfect, I suppose I need to note that these are things a leader should do. And I'm proud to say these traits are what our EMILY's List candidates and leaders of our organization have exemplified consistently over the years.

For us, that means we expect transparency and honesty from the women we work with, even when that's hard. We promise that same honesty in return. Sometimes that means making a tough call when we decide not to give a candidate the support she anticipated. Those calls are some of my least favorite parts of my job, but the only way I can do my job is to be transparent and do the right thing for our organization, even when it's hard.

I remember when I called Katie McGinty in 2013. Katie was running for governor in Pennsylvania in a multicandidate primary that included soon-to-be-EMILY's List-endorsed Congresswoman Allyson Schwartz. I wanted Katie to hear from me that we were going to endorse the other woman in the race. It was not the news she wanted to hear. She had hoped we would stay out of a multiwoman primary, but when there were so few women governors, we knew we had to get involved.

On the call, Katie made her case, and I will be honest, I was impressed. I knew she didn't have a path to become governor that year, but I could tell she had something. So I told her at the end of the call that whether she won or lost this primary, I was going to be her first call, because I wanted to help with her next political steps if she was willing. As promised, I called her the night she lost that election-and I called her again the next year to recruit her for a 2016 United States Senate race. She ran another great campaign, this time with EMILY's List's support the whole way, and she barely lost to the incumbent by less than 2 points. And though she didn't win, Katie was surely an inspiration for the women who broke down barriers and flipped seats in Pennsylvania in 2018.

Throughout the course of campaigns, candidates are sometimes given the chance to take the easy path. I could have not called Katie to tell her we weren't endorsing her. But then we would have missed out on future opportunities. Or worse, in some cases, campaigns may even be asked or told to cut corners or skirt the law. But what's easy today can become much tougher down the road. Not only will voters often sniff out the lack of integrity, but cutting corners often comes back to haunt you in more concrete ways. In short, it's not worth it. At EMILY's List, we are careful to endorse women who know that a candidate should live her espoused values and that you can't ask people to vote for you if they can't believe in you. These women are competitive, and they want to win badly. But they know they have to win in a way they and their supporters can be proud of: with integrity.