Fred and Maria Wright, whom we met in the last chapter and whose son Jerry was killed at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, were shocked to discover just how little most legislators knew about the bills they were voting on. “In our advocacy work, we’ve learned that when a bill is introduced, most lawmakers get a party-line memo telling them how to vote,” Fred says. “We’ve learned to ask lawmakers if they know about different aspects of the bill, and they don’t have a clue because it wasn’t in their party summary.” Not exactly the kind of thoughtful leadership you’d hope for from an elected official!
The Bad News About Running for Office as a Woman
Part of the reason our legislatures are subpar is because there are far too few women working in them. As of January 2019, 76 percent of members of the US Congress were men, along with 72 percent of state legislators,1 82 percent of governors,2 and nearly 78 percent of mayors (of cities of more than 30,000 residents).3 These numbers are abysmal.
But we’ve made progress: Six times as many women are serving in state legislatures today than in 1971. In 2019, the nationwide share of female legislators is around 28 percent, a seemingly small yet still significant jump of three percentage points over 2018.4 Thirty-seven percent of those congresswomen are women of color. That said, we can’t sit back and wait for the passage of time to move the needle for us. We’ve got to be proactive. We’ve got to run for elected office.
This all begs the larger question: Why is there so much gender disparity in government? Researchers have found several reasons for the lack of women in elected office, including the fact that they’re less likely than men to be encouraged to run—even by their parents and teachers. And unlike men, women underestimate their own abilities and qualifications to hold office. Career and family obligations also factor in, which may explain why the average age for a woman to run for office in the United States is about fifty—when her children are likely to be grown or nearly grown.5
Catherine Stefani, a California Moms Demand Action volunteer and the District 2 city and county supervisor for San Francisco, had the typical background to become an elected official: she was an attorney who had worked as a legislative aide for years and had completed a training for aspiring female candidates back in 2009. She also had always known that someday she wanted to run for office, but still she didn’t do it until after the mayor of San Francisco died. As a result, her boss, a city and county supervisor, was appointed to become mayor, and, in turn, Catherine was appointed to fill her boss’s shoes. In 2018, she ran to keep her seat, and she won. As qualified as Catherine was, it took a lightning strike to get her to run.
Even Lucy McBath, who had been a nationally recognized gun violence prevention advocate for years, says no one suggested she run for office (in 2018, she became the congressional representative for her district in Georgia) except for Moms Demand Action. “There was no one coming to me saying, ‘We need your voice,’ until Shannon started saying things like ‘When you run for office . . .’” Even after years of loving nudges from me, it took the 2016 election and a hip replacement—which forced Lucy to sit still long enough to deeply consider her next move—to persuade her to run. “I prayed a lot during the winter of 2016, and then the pieces started to fall into place,” she says. The political action committee EMILY’s List and then the Democratic Party of Georgia gave Lucy awards for her advocacy. Then Georgia state representative Renitta Shannon took Lucy out to breakfast and encouraged her to run. It took all these events for her to realize that she had more than enough experience to say “yes.”
And really, it’s no surprise that it took so many years and so many people to influence Lucy: a 2013 study found that even among today’s generation of college students, men are twice as likely as women to have considered running for office someday. That same study found that men are 15 percent more likely to be recruited to actually run.6
And once they do decide to run, woman candidates still face more obstacles than men. Research shows that the media treat female candidates differently from male candidates—they’re covered less, and when they do make the news, the coverage is often focused on their appearance or their likability.7 Sound familiar? Unbelievably, a 2015 study found that some voters prefer male candidates even when evidence clearly indicates that the female candidate is more qualified.8
Women also have to overcome gender bias among voters or donors who don’t take woman candidates as seriously as men. “As a woman, and especially a woman of color, I have to raise twice the amount of money because it’s harder to get people to believe in how I can make a difference,” Lucy McBath says. In addition, raising money is harder for women because, as newer candidates, they typically don’t have the relationships that provide access to money that white male candidates have.
And on top of all that, women are held to a different standard regarding their looks. “I have had people ask me, ‘What are you going to do about your hair?’ Or your nails, or your voice—I have a quiet voice. These are things they would never tell a man,” says Christy Clark.
Looking at all the obstacles we have to overcome, I can understand why women resist the idea of running. But the environment isn’t the only sector experiencing climate change—so is the political realm, and the tide is turning toward women. And honestly, given where this nation is right now regarding its treatment of women, especially women of color and marginalized communities, running isn’t just a nice-to-do—it’s a moral imperative.
Having more mothers in office is also how we start to do better on the issues that affect children and families the most. Rhode Island governor Gina Raimondo is a great example of this. “My priorities are absolutely influenced by my role as a mother,” she admits. “I’ve made record investments in education and I’ve really leaned in to gun violence and health care. I’ve seen my kids flourish because of good pre-K and full-day kindergarten and access to good health care, and I want the same for all kids.” By running for office, you don’t just give women a seat at the table; you also bring your and everyone else’s kids along with you.
The Good News About Being a Woman and Running for Office
There are women who are starting to realize that you don’t need a perfect résumé to hold office. Jennifer Lugar, a Moms Demand Action volunteer from Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, whose husband shot and killed himself in 2009, is one of them. Jennifer had been an activist for years, but it wasn’t until she stepped up her involvement during the 2016 presidential election that the idea of running for office became real in her mind. “Very quickly the mystery of politics started to erode,” she recalls. “When you start showing up, you start knowing the people and spending more time in the campaign office. You see how accessible it is.” Then, when a reality TV star who had never held an elected office before won the presidency, “this huge barrier in my mind was removed—I couldn’t use the excuse that I wasn’t qualified enough anymore because I was at least as qualified as the president.”
In December 2016, Jennifer received an email saying that the borough council of Jenkintown had two openings. “I didn’t even think about it for more than two minutes; I attached my résumé without even reading it over first and threw my hat in the ring.” Nine people were interviewed for the spot, and in January 2017, Jennifer was appointed. In November 2017, she ran to keep her seat, and she won.
Despite the unique hurdles woman candidates face, research shows women are as likely as men to win when they run for office (perhaps because they run only when they are ridiculously qualified) and that voters put more weight in a candidate’s party, not their gender, when making their ultimate decisions.
And data show that once they get into office, women may make more effective elected officials for their constituents than men: a study published in 2018 by researchers at Georgia State University found that female legislators secure more federal funding for their districts and introduce more bills and resolutions than male legislators do. Women also do the work it takes to stay in office once elected: t
hese same researchers found that congresswomen send 17 percent more snail mail communications to their constituents than congressmen do and are more likely than their male counterparts to take on committee assignments that reflect the interests and demands of their districts. Furthermore, women are more likely to vote in ways that reflect their constituents’ needs.9
As Michele L. Swers, a professor of government at Georgetown University who studies gender and policymaking, told the New York Times, “All members of Congress have to follow their constituency, but because of their personal experiences either as women in the work force or as mothers, [congresswomen] might be inclined to legislate on some of these issues.”10
Our naturally high empathy levels are a huge piece of what makes us more effective elected officials. “Democracy depends on being able to connect with the people you represent,” says Jennifer Lugar. “That’s a characteristic that is too often missing in male lawmakers, and something that more women have. Because we take care of so many people and different facets of life, we have a more holistic perspective.”
Woman lawmakers have also historically been more aggressive in addressing gun violence through policy and legislation than their male peers. In 1994, California senator Dianne Feinstein was the architect and chief sponsor of the Assault Weapons Ban. When it came to a vote, 83 percent of the women in the House, and all but one woman in the Senate, voted in favor of the ban; only 50 percent of the men in the House and 59 percent of the men in the Senate voted for it.11
More recently, Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar and Michigan representative Debbie Dingell worked together to craft legislation that would keep guns away from domestic abusers by broadening the definition of prohibited purchasers to include dating partners and stalkers convicted of abuse. For both women, the issue is personal. As a county prosecutor, Klobuchar helped establish some of the first domestic violence service centers in the nation. Dingell grew up in a household where domestic gun violence was a constant threat. As I write this, the bill has yet to make it out of committee, but these women have continued to put it on the docket each year since 2015, the year they first introduced it. I have no doubt that their resilience and dedication to protect other women and children from violent domestic partners will ultimately result in a win.
The NRA, which has fought against all major gun legislation for decades, also opposed these bills by woman lawmakers—and, not surprisingly, it has labeled a disproportionate percentage of the woman lawmakers in Congress as being “anti-gun.”
But the NRA can’t intimidate and control women as easily as they can men, because we’re driven by something higher than simply staying in office for the sake of staying in office. Christy Clark says, “Moms aren’t thinking only about ourselves and our goals; we think of our children and grandchildren as we make decisions, and that’s what separates a male politician from a female politician. And we’re not trying to make life better for just our own kids, but for all the kids in every neighborhood, school, and home.” In other words, we’re not motivated by a love of power; we’re driven by a love for our kids and a desire to create a country that’s a safe place for them to grow up. There is no greater force in the world.
It’s a force that fueled Nikki Fried, a former commercial-litigation lawyer and public defender, to run for—and win!—the office of the Florida commissioner of Agriculture and Consumer Services, which presides over the gun-permitting process. Nikki says she was inspired to run—and to keep going—in large part by Moms Demand Action volunteers. “A campaign trail can sometimes be a lonely place,” Nikki admits. “Any time I needed support and encouragement, the women of Moms Demand Action were there. Their presence was a constant reminder of why I was running—to help these hard-working mothers who are fighting for children all across the country who need people like me to step up and help protect them.”
Nikki’s predecessor, Adam Putnam, had been hugely influenced by NRA lobbyist Marion Hammer, who would practically dictate changes she wanted to see in the permitting process.12 Worse yet, Putnam was found to have neglected for thirteen months the background check process for people requesting concealed carry permits, enabling more than eight hundred people who shouldn’t have been eligible to legally carry a concealed weapon. During her campaign, Nikki promised very clearly that if she was elected, the NRA would have no influence in her department. “My job is to have background checks done properly,” she says. “We’re not going to be cutting corners for time efficiency, we’re going to do it right.” Her win is a huge step forward for gun-sense policies, and a perfect example of why we need women to run for a variety of political offices so that we have access to many levers of power when it comes to making America safer from gun violence.
These woman lawmakers who are working so hard to strengthen our nation’s gun laws are simply reflecting the will of American women at large. Polls continually show that women support gun safety more than men. Recently, a Quinnipiac University poll found a “wide gender gap” in views on gun laws: 69 percent of women polled supported stricter gun laws, and 26 percent didn’t; while the split was down the middle for men—47 percent supported stricter gun laws, and 47 percent opposed them.13
As I write this, there will be 127 women in the 116th Congress14—35 new women were elected to the House of Representatives in 2018, a record that makes us much better positioned to make women’s desire for stricter gun laws a reality. I can’t wait to see the gains we’ll make together.
If You Want to Win, You’ve Got to Train
About two years after I founded Moms Demand Action, it became clear to me that our volunteers were looking to take the skills they’d learned as activists and apply them to running for office. I started seeing volunteers announce on social media that they were exploring a run for school board or city council or had already filed to run for office. So I went to our leadership team and suggested that we develop a more formal training program.
Moms Demand Action was already providing our volunteers with training for a variety of advocacy-related work, including communications coaching, guidance on growing membership, working with data, etc. So why not add a module that would encourage and prepare our volunteers to run for office? If nothing else, it would plant the seed in the minds of volunteers and gun violence survivors that becoming an elected official was the next logical—and completely attainable—step on their paths as activists.
Soon after, we created a comprehensive guide to help volunteers navigate tough questions when deciding whether to run for office. Developed in conjunction with experts in political campaigning, the guide helps volunteers zero in on which race they should choose to enter given their passions and geography. It also provides important information about the key components of a successful campaign, from creating a month-by-month calendar to finding funders.
Furthermore, we’ve created training modules to help potential candidates drill down on campaign specifics, including the creation of an “elevator pitch”: a personal story about their campaign that can be told in the length of an elevator ride. Another module explains how to create a budget that will carry candidates through their campaigns, and how to raise money. And another explains how to energize and mobilize voters, including specific directions on how to organize a canvass.
In addition to this training, we urge our volunteers to seek out local organizations that focus specifically on training women for office. For several years I’ve been on the national board of the nonprofit organization Emerge America, which seeks to increase the number of Democratic woman leaders, and I graduated from its Colorado program in 2016. (In case you’re wondering, while I have certainly learned that life can take you in a direction you didn’t expect, I don’t have any plans to run for office. I’m confident I can do more good where I am. Here, I get to help create change at every level—local, state, federal, and within women’s own minds and lives.)
Emerge America focuses specifically on training progressive women to run for office and has a
n excellent track record of helping to elect women to municipal and state elected positions. Programs like Emerge augment the training Moms Demand Action offers by broadening the issues they focus on beyond gun safety. They also help women create relationships in communities and with other women who can help support their candidacies. There are training programs for woman candidates of all types: the National Federation of Republican Women is for, well, Republican women; the Victory Institute focuses on LGBTQ candidates; and the Women’s Campaign Fund is a bipartisan organization that seeks to train female-identifying candidates of all ideologies and ethnicities.
Women supporting women is key to any successful race, and once our volunteers do decide to run—and go through our training and file for a specific race—they then have a built-in support system of fellow Moms Demand Action volunteers willing to canvass, make calls, and hold fundraisers for them in their communities.
Amber Gustafson says, “My local Moms Demand Action volunteers were just amazing!” Granted, moms in general, and Moms Demand Action volunteers in particular, are busy, so they often have to find ways to involve their kids in their volunteer work. “They marched in parades with me,” Amber says. “It was such an easy and kid-friendly thing to do, and it helped fill a need that not a lot of other volunteers are interested in showing up to do.”
Moms Demand Action candidates are great at finding ways for moms to volunteer for their campaigns in a way that makes sense. Catherine Stefani, who, as our former San Francisco chapter lead for four years, has multiple years of experience organizing volunteers, points out that the people who support your candidacy may have reservations about being qualified to help or not having enough time to be truly helpful. The way to cut through that, Catherine says, is to let everyone participate to the level that makes sense for them. “I told my team, ‘Give what you can and don’t judge it, and I won’t judge you.’ By giving volunteers the opportunity to work with their schedule and their strengths, you can build up an incredible team” to help you knock on doors, make phone calls, and write postcards. She used this approach to build the Moms Demand Action chapter and to get herself elected.
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