Emily's List: Chicks With Checks
Hirschmann, Susan
E ver since Anita Hill was shamed before an all-male Senate Judiciary Committee, activist women have been itching to get back at the political system. The feminist backlash, we have been endlessly...
...Chamber of Commerce...
...A lthough winning twenty-five of their fifty-five races is impressive given Emily's radical positions, the PAC suffered some setbacks in the Year of the Woman...
...Campaign finance laws limit PAC contributions per candidate to $5,000 in the primary and another $5,000 during the general election, but Emily's List skirted these restrictions with a technique it pioneered, called "bundling...
...f course, Emily's list is also in the business of taking contributions for itself...
...When they came after me with tens of thousands of dollars, I first had to explain to my supporters who they were...
...Even though it raised nearly $80,000 in an effort to defeat Florida Rep...
...The lesson...
...In some cases, the candidate was so liberal that she couldn't help herself and her true beliefs became a hot issue...
...National Organization for Women, and homosexual activist Tim McFeeley of the Human Rights Campaign Fund...
...In addition to these initial contributions, donors must promise to give at least $100 to two or more of the candidates on Emily's List, thus setting the bundling process in motion...
...Then there was Cathy Steinberg in Georgia, defeated because her opponent, John Linder, was smart enough to derail her efforts to run on the "woman's platform...
...That the candidate who has the money to make the media buys can dictate the message and tone of the campaign...
...The idea is that these initial contributions would serve as seed money to encourage big donors and PACs to contribute as well...
...To be sure, tactics like bundling demonstrated a degree of sophistication hitherto absent from the radical feminist community...
...Arlen Specter the scare of his life...
...She faced six other Democratic candidates and landed in a runoff with the son of the retiring 26-year incumbent...
...Also contributing some of their own money are leaders such as Molly Yard, past president of the...
...Nancy Pelosi, Nita Lowey, Louise Slaughter, and Jolene Unsoeld managed only 9 percent...
...Emily's losing candidate in California's 11th congressional district, Patti Garamendi, ran her whole campaign on abortion rights, gay rights, and support for Ice-T, the rapper of "Cop Killer" fame...
...Indeed, most of its winners ran on platforms of "change" rather than the beliefs that attracted all the liberal PAC money...
...Not one of the fifty-five Emily's List candidates signed the Americans for Tax Reform's "No New Taxes Pledge...
...Eva Clayton to the tune of $55,000...
...John Seymour, and most would agree that he was more of a threat to himself than anyone was to him...
...Its members tend to be well-heeled and pay between $100 to $5,000 directly to Emily's List to help defray the costs of recruiting, grooming, and preparing profiles of endorsed candidates...
...bundling still left Emily's List free to use its maximum $5,000 PAC contributions in kind, sending in its own advisers to consult, poll, and do mailings...
...Today it claims that outrage over those hearings boosted membership sevenfold, going from an organization of 3,500 members who raised $1.5 million dollars in 1990 to 24,000 members and the $6.2 million raised last year...
...He stuck to bread-and-butter politics and defined how liberal she was on economic questions...
...0 n paper, Emily's List asks only that candidates support federally funded abortions and the ERA in return for an endorsement...
...Emily's List boasts of having poured $150,000 into her 1986 race...
...Nor did any receive the support of the NFIB, the Business Industry PAC, or the U.S...
...Malcolm, who still directs the dayto-day operations of the thirteen-woman staff in offices down the street from the White House, has been called the Queenmaker of the Democratic Party, and in 1992 her attention paid off: Emily's List raised $6.2 million for its slate of fifty-five Democratic women candidates, making it the largest single contributor to congressional and Senate races last year...
...The only incumbent taken out by bundling was California Sen...
...The 4,200 attendees watched videos of the '92 women winners to the accompaniment of "Money" (from the musical Cabaret, as in "Money makes the world go around") and were cheered by such heroines as Barbara Mikulski, who told them, "Some women spend their lives waiting for Prince Charming to come...
...E. Clay Shaw, more than $45,000 against California Rep...
...In Pennsylvania, Lynn Yeakel received more than $580,000 from Emily's List to give Sen...
...Second, donors are more likely to give, because they know that their contributions will have a greater political impact if bundled with thousands of others...
...Not that this transformation was entirely spontaneous...
...The PAC likes to portray its candidates simply as Democrats who care deeply about abortion and women's rights...
...This kind of free advertising during an election cycle is a fund-raiser's dream, and Emily's List candidates profited immensely...
...Mikulski scored a cumulative 25 percent rating with the U.S...
...Shortly after the hearings, Emily's List began receiving a barrage of flattering media profiles, including a puff piece on "60 Minutes" and articles in the Seattle Times, the Chicago Tribune, the National Journal, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times...
...John Doolittle, and almost $135,000 against Iowa Rep...
...Chamber of Commerce and only 14 percent with the National Federation of Independent Businesses for the 102nd Congress...
...In practice, however, its candidates are consistently to the left on fiscal and foreign policy issues as well...
...Emily's List is now looking to make the 1990s the Decade of the Woman...
...Tom Petri in Wisconsin, and Karan English, who won an open seat in Arizona, were able to bring in comparable PAC support at least partly because, of endorsements from Emily's List...
...In 1992, this meant the drawing of thirteen new black and six new Hispanic seats, almost all of them in heavily Democratic areas...
...Patty Murray, the tennis-shoed senator from Washington state, collected $200,000...
...The voting records of incumbents who serve as Honorary Advisers help flesh out the Emily's List ideal...
...Emily's List also showed political savvy in selecting candidates only in viable districts, and in takingfull advantage of the check-kiting and other congressional scandals...
...Even in a constituency where liberal Democrats have to mask their views, Emily's List can make a diffrence...
...This arrangement offers three benefits that are hard to beat...
...Finally, a candidate who gets her name on Emily's List sends a strong signal to the liberal PAC community that she is a friendly and financially viable office-seeker...
...The two other prominent Senate winners—Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein—roped in almost $355,000 and $300,000, respectively...
...Now, candidates such as freshman California senator Barbara Boxer, a prominent feminist running in a high-profile Senate race, may not need Emily's List to attract this liberal PAC money...
...A lthough Emily's List was around long before the Thomas-Hill controversy, the judge's 1991 confirmation hearings gave the PAC a huge boost...
...While most of her contributions came from liberal Hollywood (Emily's pitched in $60,000), this was a conservative district (despite the 51-39 percent Democratic advantage in registration) largely composed of farmers and ranchers...
...That advantage shouldn't last, but for now conservatives have no viable way of countering a PAC that most of them have never even heard of...
...In North Carolina, for example, the first congressional district was redrawn with a 54-percent-black voter base...
...Most conservatives don't even know who they are—let alone how radical...
...In 1992, Emily's List had enough money to get out in front and enough novelty to avoid scrutiny into some of the less savory ideologies it bankrolled...
...Indeed, most of the Emily's List candidates were strongly opposed by the business community as well as the social conservatives...
...That was amply demonstrated in the election of liberal Democrat Karen Shepherd to Utah's second congressional district, in the heart of which lies Salt Lake City—world headquarters of the Mormon Church...
...Out on the campaign trail, the record of Emily's List candidates was mixed...
...Other members of Emily's advisers scored even lower...
...The single largest source of this bonanza was the political action committee Emily's List, which stands for "Early Money Is Like Yeast" (it makes the dough rise...
...In targeting the first district, Emily's List supported new Rep...
...Carol Moseley-Braun, who based her entire campaign on the I-believe-Anita line, was hand-fed almost $340,000 from Emily's List—more than the National Federation of Independent Businesses gave to all of its candidates combined...
...Her opponent, rancher Richard Pombo, refused to be intimidated by all the nasty name-calling and gave Garamendi enough rope with which to hang herself...
...Pat Schroeder registered a flat zero with the NFIB, as did Barbara Boxer...
...In Pennsylvania's 13th district, Emily's $70,000 helped candidate Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky squeak by Republican John Fox by fewer than 1,500 votes in a district that has a two-to-one GOP advantage and had been held by a Republican for seventy-six years...
...For in addition to the free media hype, liberal Democratic women running for office in 1992 hit the fund-raising jackpot...
...In fact, so tight is the relationship between Emily's List and these liberal PACs that PACs ranging from the Machinists and the United Auto Workers to the National Education Association make direct contributions to Emily's List...
...The open seats were important, because they meant no incumbent advantage in money...
...Emily's List's donors are a virtual Who's Who of the "cultural elite...
...But most of Emily's List candidates also receive large PAC contributions from a host of organizations whose agendas might suggest otherwise, from big labor (the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Sheet Metal Workers of America, Communication Workers of America, COPE, the AFL-CIO, the International Association of Machinists, the National Education Association, and the American Federation of Teachers), environmental groups (the Sierra Club), and left-wing special interest groups (the Human Rights Campaign Fund, the Women's Campaign Fund, the National Abortion Rights Action League, the Hollywood Women's Political Committee...
...I spent my life waiting for Dianne and Carol and Barbara...
...Emily's list is the biggest stealth organization on the left," says Doolittle...
...On top of this, it keyed in on several of the newly drawn "minority" districts created by new judicial interpretations of the Voting Rights Act, which now requires that minorities be given maximum opportunity to elect their own to Congress...
...Emily's List then "bundles" all the checks for each candidate and forwards them to the campaign offices of their chosen candidates, thereby maximizing the effect of individual donations...
...Maryland Senator Barbara Mikulski is a prominent member of its advisory board...
...Colorado Rep...
...In a year when their own candidate for President was reminding himself that "it's the economy, stupid," this is not an encouraging trend...
...On the same scale, Reps...
...Rather than write its own checks to candidates (and thereby subject itself to the above restrictions), Emily's List asks donors to send individual checks made out not to the PAC but to the campaigns of candidates it selects...
...Emily's List produced more than $80,000 for Shepherd, which, when combined with environmental, union, and feminist contributions, gave her a financial edge that her opponent simply could not overcome...
...The feminist backlash, we have been endlessly told, is responsible for vaulting four new women senators and twenty-five new congresspersons into office in last year's election cycle...
...Malcolm envisioned the PAC as a means of providing pro-abortion, pro-ERA Democratic women candidates with large amounts of money early in the election cycle...
...But Pombo held fast to the high ground and won...
...o celebrate its tremendous successes in 1992, T Emily's List held a headline-grabbing Inaugural Week luncheon at the Washington Hilton, which it called "the largest political fund-raiser for women in the history of this country...
...But even if a candidate feels he can win by emphasizing differences, a bigger problem is the relativeanonymity of the fledgling PAC...
...After all, she is "married with children," while her pro-life, conservative, Mormon opponent was single...
...The candidates themselves give every indication that they will live up to the standards of their mentors...
...If you weren't the kind of gal that goes for big government, higher taxes, federal funding of abortion, the Equal Rights Amendment, gun control, and all kinds of government quotas and mandates, then sister, you weren't woman enough to make it to the gravy train...
...But such relative unknowns as Peggy Lautenschlager, who ran unsuccessfully against incumbent Rep...
...Jim Lightfoot, to name but a few, it was to no avail—incumbents had the money to attack back and define how radical the Emily's List candidates were...
...Running against incumbents, Emily's List fared even worse...
...Including the newly drawn minority districts, Emily's List bundled to thirty-one, winning twenty-one...
...Lightfoot, for instance, defeated his opponent in part by running ads showing a dirty-fmgernailed blue-collar worker reaching for his wallet, which a red-fingernailed hand was about to grab...
...Despite having accepted money from Molly Yard as well as feminist, pro-abortion, and homosexual PACs, Shepherd portrayed herself as "pro-family" in the campaign...
...Emily's List took advantage of the primaries, when it could get the most bang for its buck, and targeted not only the new districts but also other races in which there were no incumbents running...
...In Oregon, a $115,000 contribution from Emily's List helped propel Oregon Peace Institute founder and liberal activist Elizabeth Furse to a come-from-behind victory in the state's first district...
...It was founded in 1985 by IBM heiress Ellen Malcolm after her involvement in the unsuccessful Senate campaign of feminist Harriet Woods...
...The profiles of Emily's List candidates usually overlook this last point, and it's not hard to see why...
...Writers and journalists are also prominent, from trash novelist Judith Krantz and Nation editor/socialite Katrina vanden Heuvel to Playboy boss Christie Hefner...
...PACs usually contribute to candidates, not other PACs...
...What the American press didn't tell you is that "The Year of the Woman" was for a very select group indeed, and had more to do with ideology than sisterhood...
...With a million bucks left over in their campaign chest as of February, and another $750,000 from the Inaugural fund-raiser, they are off to a good start...
...First, there is absolutely no legal limit to the amount of money that can be bundled to any single candidate...
...In many, winning the primary was tantamount to winning the congressional seat...
...She defended Ice-T in ads that showed burning crosses and called Pombo a racist...
...This was also a district in which the winner of the Democratic primary would face no serious Republican opponent in the general election...
...Its Federal Election Commission (FEC) reports shine brightly with stars: Roseanne Arnold and hubby, Helen Reddy, Norman Lear, Lily Tomlin, and Mario Thomas, to name only a few...
...Her victory is a case study of the impact that early support can have in crowded, low-turnout primaries...
Vol. 26 • April 1993 • No. 4
