Popular vote by a margin of nearly 3 million people. Although u. S. Politics began 2017 with some grim numbers, occupying less than 25 of government offices, we also witnessed a historic numbers of women pouring into the street in the way come Donald Trumps inauguration. Since then, we have seen a massive upsurge in the number of women coming forward to run for Political Office. Its the start of this year, more than the 11,000 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 turn womens desire for office into electoral reality . We have to start by getting our facts straight. For too long the conversation about Political Leadership by women in the u. S. , by what i mean me striking lack of political parity has been hamstrung by ideas of what holds women act. We cannot say that women have less political ambition but years of Academic Research and recent events we have witnessed clearly indicate these factors do not tell the whole story. They are a relatively small part of the story of why we do not 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 election and 22 of winners. On the senate side, women were 31 of candidates in the november election and 42 of winners. The problem is not the voters will not elect women, it is that theyre not getting a chance to elect them because women are not making their way onto ballots. In the campaign season, the last year for which a full set is available, women were 20 of the candidates. That same spring, women made up 29 of elected officials that the federal, state, and local levels according to the 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 its recruitment, fundraising, and the support of gatekeepers. Those forces, which favor insiders and incumbents, keep women of color more sidelined still. Until we address and change the way the political powers operate, we will not be able to meaningfully address how to get women elected. The goal of promoting a truly reflective democracy which looks like a end speaks of the ians to all of us will remain out of reach. Promoting a truly reflective democracy which speaks to all of us will remain out of reach. Our panelists today will give us a sense of the current landscape and talk about the sorts of concrete Structural Solutions that can open up the political universe to the most diverse range of women. We are grateful to have with us to wonderful members of congress that we have had the pleasure of working with over the years. The first Indian American woman in the house of representatives. She spent the last 20 years working for womens, immigrants, and civil rights. We worked with for a state senator and are so pleased to welcome her to congress this year. Also, congresswoman Nanette Barragan from california. She began her career this year in the house of representative. Born in harbor city, california, she is the youngest of 11 children raised by immigrants from mexico. Through uclalf usc law school. They will join us along with judith warner, the fellow at cap action who put out a paper last week. Theme join me in welcoming to this stage. [applause] great to see you all here today. Thank you for being here. The report is about opening the gates, looking at the structural barriers keeping women off ballots and out of office. Both of you are success stories. I wonder maybe we will start with what worked. To what do you ascribe the success you have had so far . You both have different stories about what led you into policies. When you look back, if you are going to tell them to women interested in getting in, what do you see that carried you . For me, i did not allow somebody to tell me to wait my turn because that is something we are still having happen today. When i got into the race, people called and said, somebody else is ready to go in. Drop out. Women first of all have to run. Most women have to be asked seven times to run. That is the first step. Making sure we are encouraging women to run. For me that is the first step. The second is fundraising. Fundraising is necessary to get your money your message out. You need to be a good candidate. There are different types of candidate and your story and narrative really helps. I was running in a time when we had a divisive president ial election. Donald trump was dividing this country, attacking immigrants and women, and mexican americans. I fit the category in all three. Tell mybe able to personal story, seo was the daughter of immigrants from mexico, my mom had only at a thet education in diabetes odds. It resonated in my district and gave people hope at a time when there was so much division. People were looking for help and we provided it. I thought i would never be in elected office. That is the first thing i say. There is not necessarily a path everybody has to follow. To the United States when i was 16 years old by myself. My parents had about 16,000 in their bank account and they used it to send me here because they thought this was where i would get the best opportunity. There were three for fashions i was supposed to be, lawyer, doctor, engineer. Politician was not one. It never occurred to me i could run and then i ended up in the activism world and started the largest immigrant Advocacy Organization in these date so i had 20 years of activism. I decided to run originally for state senate because i realized after 20 years of trying to get other people to do the things we felt should be done that we really needed more of us in office. We needed more people to reflect the diversity in the country, more women. I ran for the state senate and i was the only woman of color. A lot of people to get is a very blue state that not only are we dealing with the piece around gender but the piece around race. We have to raise that over it and over again. For me, the anxiety matic successful was i had a very strong base. I had worked with the labor unions, womens organizations, aggressive groups. I had a standing in the criminal Justice Community and all of those people were so excited to see me run. It was not a thing of having to collect names, i had lived experience of working with people. Was on thething fundraising side, i think if you have candidates who are exciting to the base, people will give money. I am not just talking about it donors. For me, a big part of the campaign was i had 83,000 donors across the country and the rage attribution was 20 23. Bernie sanders was 27. We raced him a seven man dollars. It was an incredibly expensive race for a nonswing race. The top two states makes it very difficult for us because he Democratic Party does not get in for one candidate or another if youre running against a democratic candidate so you are on your on. With help from emilys list and other groups. That was a big heart of it. Do not think of the way that things have been done as the only way things can be done. In terms ofit up how we organize and raise money. The third part was doorknocking. I love it. A lot of candidates do not for me it is the way, this incredible privilege, to spend two or three minutes on the door with somebody you have never met and have them tell you their hopes andeams and fears. We made over 280,000 phone calls. Theres no question in my mind that is a huge part of why i want. To return to the unique this, your opponents were democrats. Luckily, all the way through. Issue, alln to that people need to be asked to run. Women have to be asked more, and they happen to be asked less. Or any of you asked more . I was asked to run by not right power brokers or gate keepers. I was asked to run by people in my community and leaders i worked with everyday. I do not think i was arrest to run by anybody in the Democratic Party. I dont think i was asked to run by sort of the people who run me 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 time 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 opponent and he was promised a seat. He ran 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 as the Seattle Times endorsed me, but not without controversy. The person that i ran against in the person i ran against in the general was a good guy. He was a progressive of latino heritage, Lgbtq 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, they gave a long paragraph about their accomplishment 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 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. 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 congress, wefor were trying to make about race. There is no doubt there was actually a local paper that was very close to my opponent. They held a fundraiser for him in their office. They did an endorsement that was all along race. It was just unfortunate. Thousands of as part of my campaign because of my track record in we just have to move away from that. People today will use it to try to divide us. We 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 ran 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 9 00 until 6 00. 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 not giving money to me, youre giving money to the vision. The minute i have that my head became easier. I think the only thing i still find hard sometimes is you have to leave a gap when you asked the question. You have to allow people to take in the question and answer. There are these uncomfortable moments that feel like its ten minutes but its actually three seconds where you dont say anything, youve major ask, may i have 5400 please and you wait. If you try to fill that space you really undermine your own fundraising because you dont give the opportunity. I do think with the greatest of humility to be able to say this is a chance to invest in our vision, and thats what youre selling, thats what youre offering, thats the way i tried to help candidates who have never done fundraising to think about it. It doesnt feel selfish, it feels like its in service of what is good for community. I think thats a great place for us to turn to audience questions. Thank you both for being here and for moderating as well. This is a wonderful panel discussion. I think something ive been curious about, my studies have done a lot of reading on women running for office and what it takes. I read a lot of things that said the initial ambitions stems from a very early age that if you did have an incentive later on it will become before your college years. Given that fact, what do you think is the best way for that to happen early on to create these habits of Civic Engagement with young girls. I dont think it was really running for office, i think it was more of an instinct to fight for