Where are the women in political campaigns?

Women are a rare sight in the upper echelons of political campaign management and strategy. Cristen and Caroline put on their detective hats to figure out why women more often end up leading fundraising and grassroots efforts.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I am Scott and I'm Ben and we're from car Stuff.
We're the podcast that covers everything that flutes, flies, swims,
or drives, adventures, thrills, chills literally, planes, trains and automobiles.
That's right. And you can find all of our episodes
on Google Play, Spotify, iTunes, and really anywhere else you
get your podcast. Welcome to Stuff Mom Never Told You

(00:25):
from House Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to
the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline and this week
could be considered House of Cards week on Stuff Mom
Never Told You. Today, we're talking about campaign strategists. Yeah,

(00:47):
because typically when you hear from a campaign strategist or
about one, it's usually a dude. Yeah, and so why
is that? Why is that? Um? And speaking of House
of Cars, before we get into women in political campaigning
and strategy, can we just take a moment to talk

(01:08):
about uh, Corey Lewandowski, who to me is Doug Stamper
on House of Cards. I r L. We'll tell the
people who he is. Okay, So besides being a real
life Doug, he is a real life Doug. People who
have not seen House of Cards are just so confused, right, now. Um, so, uh,

(01:29):
Corey Lewandowski is Donald Trump's campaign manager, and he's been
extremely visible throughout the whole campaign. Um. I would say
that he's been the most visible campaign manager, partially because
he was charged with simple battery of former Bright Bart
reporter Michelle Fields. Um. The charges have since been dropped.

(01:52):
But he is what you would expect Donald Trump's campaign
manager to. I mean, he's opinionated, he's pretty, let's say,
rough and tumble. I like, how diplomatic you're being. Well,
this is all about campaign strategy and spend secure, trying

(02:14):
to like really just get into the spirit of it. Yeah,
but didn't he Like, but he pushed her right, Yeah.
I watched the security footage you can see it online.
And he grabs her and and pulls her away. I
mean it's kind of hard to see what exactly went down,
but um, yeah it was. I mean just just the
very idea of that happening seemed just I'm a stranger

(02:41):
than fiction. Although we can't like this political season, we
should just expect stuff like that to be happening, you know.
I Mean it's almost like on like low on the
list of bizarro things that have happened so far. I know,
just the the day before we came into the studio
to record this podcast. Uh Baynard referred to Ted Cruise

(03:03):
as Lucifer in the flesh, like things are just so
weird politically, like things are so weird. And instead of
focusing on the people out front like Ted Cruz, Carlie Furina,
Donald Trump, etcetera, we wanted to pull back the curtain
and look at the political machinery because obviously, with all

(03:25):
the money but now goes into political campaigning, there's so
much background work to hone messages and optics and events,
and you have when you look at the gender breakdown
of who does what behind the scenes of political campaigns,

(03:46):
you have um a little pocket where women are are
um welcomed, and then the rest of it. It's pretty
tough for a lady. It can be pretty tough for
a lady to branch out in in the strategy realm.
But first I wanted to take a look at people
behind the scenes in general, so campaigns staffers, because I'm

(04:09):
sure a lot of you saw that big Jezebel piece.
It was looking at how men and women in campaign
staffs are paid, and how many are employed and over
all the numbers are pretty pretty bad. Uh So, this
again is coming from Jezebel and the The campaign with
the highest paid discrepancy between men and women was Ted Cruz. Uh.

(04:32):
Male employees make an average of twenty thou more than
female employees in that campaign, the now defunct Rubio campaign
actually paid women the best. They made on average just
more than five thousand dollars more than male staffers. And
of ten of the ten highest paid staffers on the
sadly defunct Rubio campaign, which a lot of people BT

(04:53):
dubs in the primaries are still voting for Rubio over Casic.
For instance, UM six for female. Six out of ten
on the Rebio highest paid staffer list were uh female.
Not so for Bernie. He is literally the only candidate
who has no women in his top ten highest paid employees.
But he has paid the women in his campaign equitably.

(05:16):
In fact, on average they're making a little under one
thousand dollars more than the men. And then if we
look at Hillary Clinton, men and women were making essentially
the same amount and of her ten highest paid staffers,
uh sixer dudes for our ladies, um, one of them
being Juma Aberdeen, who's one of the biggest names really

(05:40):
in political campaigning period. She's Hillary's chief of staff and
her campaign's vice chairwoman. Um. And she also was on
Call your Girlfriend not that long ago, which was uh
interesting to hear. I mean, like I'd never She's been
featured in a number of magazines, um, in profiles and

(06:01):
obviously his gotten a lot of attention because her husband
is Anthony Weener. Um. But it was it was nice
to hear whom I have just kind of off the
cuff conversation as off the cuff as a chief of
staff can be. Yeah. And I love knowing that she
started working for Hillary as an intern at the White

(06:22):
House in so she's been with her a long time. Um.
And if you look at Trump, out of his ten
highest paid staff members, seven or men and three or women. Uh,
and women on average make three thousand dollars less than
men their male counterparts for the Trump campaign. And John
Kasik is actually the only candidate who has a female
campaign manager. Her name's Beth Hanson. And actually Mike Huckabee

(06:44):
two did too, he hired his daughter. But you know
he's long gone as well, I mean from the campaign, right,
not from from earth, correct, Okay? Um? Uh yeah. I
find it so ironic that k Sik has the lone
woman campaign manager, Beth Hansen, because his policies regarding women,

(07:07):
as he's been um, Ohio governor, have not been so
lady friendly again, you're being so diplomatic. Um. So he
oversaw massive shutdowns of abortion providers in the state. He
passed two thousand thirteen budget to defund Planned parenthood while

(07:28):
mandating ultrasounds UM. And in an interview with Beth Hansen
in EL magazine, the interviewer asked, like, what she thought
about when k Sick essentially shut down UM a young
woman's question in one of his events by saying, oh,

(07:49):
look I don't I don't have any tickets to the
Taylor Swift concert. And and L magazine was understandably like, okay, Like,
how do you answer to that? How can you say
that your candidate is still like a woman friendly person?
And she was like, well, you know, he has young daughters,
he has teenage daughters, and he's just you know, I

(08:09):
think it was just like he was trying to be funny,
and I mean it was just like spin spin spin spin. UM.
But apparently she's been she's been with him for quite
a while as well. Um, but if we look at
the gender breakdown in terms of UH numbers, just like
of staffers, every campaign minus Hillary Clinton's has employed significantly

(08:31):
more men than women, which does reflect just the broader
trend in politics. But I was heartened to see that
Hillary Clinton, the one woman running for president, did hire
or has hired more women on her staff than men. Yeah,
and we will and it's not just Hillary. We will
talk about that aspect of women in politics here again

(08:53):
in a little bit. But you know, the whole skewing
male thing obviously has been going on for for a minute.
It the political consulting field itself rose to prominence in
the nineteen seventies and eighties. This is when you start
to see the professionalization of people working on campaigns, and
of course consulting that sort of encompasses a broad range

(09:16):
of positions, everything from campaign managers to people who were
just consulting on like media appearances and things like that.
So it's kind of a broad range of positions. Um.
It was in that we see the first ever female
campaign manager, Susan Estric. She was hired to run Democrat

(09:36):
Michael Dukakis's bid for president back then in the eighties,
but also didn't she get it, she was kind of
the runner up. Oh yeah, she was not the first choice. Yeah.
The dude he wanted to hire was I don't know,
otherwise engaged washing his hair. Um. In two thousand four
Mary Beth k Hill, John Kerry's campaign manager, was the
only woman in that role, uh, for that presid sidential race.

(10:01):
And in two and twenty eleven, according to often quoted
Rhetger's political science professor Kelly Ditmar Uh, she was looking
at political consultants, which again that encompasses strategists, pollsters, ad makers, managers,
media advisors, uh, people who were working in top firms
on senatorial and gubernatorial races those years eleven, and she

(10:26):
found that about seventy of consultants with strategic influence were men,
but a higher number of women were working on Democratic
campaigns than on Republican ones. And that's like you see
that every year, almost in every type of race, at
every level of government, that more women are working for
the Democrats, more women are in the higher levels of

(10:50):
those consulting firms who work with Democrats. Yeah. So in
two thousand fourteen, for instance, among key Senate races, six
percent of up campaigns had female managers versus of Democratic campaigns,
and that was something that Mitt Romney's former deputy campaign
manager manager called disturbing in terms of the lack of

(11:14):
senior level women. Yeah, I mean so basically, when you
are reading articles about women in consulting in campaign strategy,
you just hear a couple of names over and over again,
some of like the o g women consultants and strategists,
and Republicans for instance, had poster Linda duval operative Maria Cino,

(11:37):
and of course consultant Mary Madaline who she's almost more
famous for being married to James Carvel. They of the
opposite political ends of the spectrum. And for the Democrats
back in the day, you had media group gurus like
Mandy Grenwalde and Don Legwin's and posters to Linda Lake
and Diane Feldman. Not to mention superstar strategist and one

(12:02):
of my favorite Twitter presence is Donna brazil Yeah, I
was selling Caroline before we came in the studio to
record that. Donna Brazila is one of the only things
that I really enjoy about watching CNN during elections, and
she is a political force to be reckoned with not

(12:22):
to mention she's made history. Um. So she worked on
every presidential campaign from nineteen seventy six to two thousand,
and when she ran Al Gore's two thousand campaign, she
became the first African American man or woman to manage
a presidential campaign. Um. And I love this fact about her.

(12:45):
She first got involved in politics when she was nine
years old, working to elect a city council member who
promised to build a playground in her neighborhood, which immediately
made me wonder, like, was that Leslie not from E
and direc because it would how perfect would that be? Um?
I know that's impossible because Leslie Nope is not real technically, Um,

(13:10):
it could be, in my heart, it could be totally
based on that story about Donna Brazil, who she did
right in a memoir that for nearly my entire life,
my mother worked as a maid. Never in her wildest
dreams did she imagine that her daughter would growp to
influence national politics or manage a presidential campaign. And I
mean it's funny that I wonder if she's sort of

(13:30):
downplaying it, because clearly this woman is determined and single
minded and even from the age of nine, like was
clearly a little politician who was able to affect change.
And speaking of her, though, women of color have been
intimately involved in grassroots political organizing since the Reconstruction and
early civil rights eras with people like I Too be

(13:54):
Wells and Mary Church Terrell and Mary McLoud Buffoon UM,
who were instrumental in the now sational Association of Colored
Women that was highly invested in UM, activating women within
black communities to organize and get out and vote UM
so that they could, you know, elect officials that would

(14:18):
have their needs in mind. UM and seguing though into
today's more establishment political machines has not surprisingly been harder,
not just for women of color but for people of
color in general. And you mentioned, Caroline that Donna Brazil
is so single minded. If we look at the nine

(14:40):
Michael Dukakis campaign, Uh, this totally reinforces and UM just
goes to show how how single minded she truly is.
So essentially like not intentionally, the campaign siloed top tier

(15:00):
operatives onto a separate floor in their campaign headquarters UM,
which mostly meant that all the white dudes were up
top and everyone else was on the bottom and Brazil
and Mignon Moore were field directors at the time, and
those two plus Susan Rice stormed upstairs, claimed a conference

(15:26):
room on the top floor and put a sign on
the door that said, Colored Girls, we shall not be moved.
And essentially, from that moment, this group of women, these
political consultants calling themselves the Colored Girls, have become this
DC force that if you hope to get elected on

(15:50):
you know, for any national campaign, like, you gotta have
dinner with them. They hold these like regular dinners, and
essentially candidates come in and they grill them by sickly
making sure that they are keeping communities of color and mind,
because it's like if if they don't like you, you're
probably not going to get elected. Yeah, well, just like
do CAUCUSUS headquarters weren't intentionally segregated along race or gender lines.

(16:15):
I mean that that could stand in for all of politics.
Politics aren't necessarily intentionally segregated along those lines, but they
often are. And so you have women like Brazil and
the rest of the Color Girls group that form this
influential contingent of women of color who were able to

(16:36):
advise candidates and remind them gently or not that you
can't forget that the Democratic base rests on the vote
of not just white men, but people of color and women.
And so if you want to make it in this town, like,
you've got to be able to think outside of your

(16:57):
own bubble. Well, yeah, and it's African American men's vote
in particular. UM. But one more thing about that campaign,
It is surprising that that even happened because, like you
mentioned earlier, Susan Estric was the campaign manager. It's like, Suze,
come on, what happened? Um. But today the group of

(17:20):
color girls, which they still refer to themselves as UM,
has expanded to include a few more women, including Reverend
Leady Daughtry and consultant Yolanda Age caraway Um and also
the d n C General counsel Tina Flourne. And in
a New York Times profile of this group, a number

(17:40):
of politicians spoke to their influence, including Howard Dean, who said, quote,
they're very rare Washington insiders who understand the rest of
the country. UM. And this whole thing speaks to why
looking at who is behind the scenes in these political
campaign matter, because if you only have white men or

(18:04):
also white women who are crafting your platforms essentially, then
there probably aren't going to necessarily take an intersectional approach
to policymaking. Yeah, yeah, exactly, And that's why Tonia Boy
points out in Asian American Policy Review that the campaign

(18:26):
staff needs to reflect constituent diversity. And she also points
out that you might have training programs if you want
to work on campaigns or in strategy. You know, there
might be a training program that's just general or ones
you know, specifically geared toward women, But there's nothing really
out there for people of color who want to step

(18:48):
up and work with campaigns and be that voice for
other populations that want to see themselves represented well and
in conversations about the gender gap within like our elected officials.
I think that this part of the pipeline, the background
political consulting and strategists and campaign managers, that aspect of

(19:10):
the pipeline is something that I know I didn't think
about before reading up for this podcast. We just think of, oh, well,
we just need more women to stand up and be
willing to be candidates. But this is an integral part
of getting more women in office too. Um, And that's
something that Boy underscores in terms of the pipeline issue

(19:32):
that if you do not train and empower more women
of color to enter into political strategy and have influence
in that realm, then the pipeline is still going to
be leaky. Yeah. And what I didn't realize before preparing
for this episode is that when women are working in
campaigns in strategy or consulting or whatever, they tend to

(19:56):
be concentrated in fundraising, which I had no I da
And this information is coming from Katie Or from k
qe D and Abby Rappaport from the Texas Tribune. Uh So, basically,
forever women have been barred from those higher level strategic
positions in campaigns. And while they're more likely to be

(20:17):
registered voters and grassroots organizers, they are way less likely
to rise to those elite levels. So what is the deal?
Why are these women like shuttled off to fundraising positions? Well,
first of all, this reflects a broader trend of women
in nonprofits of it being more acceptable for women to

(20:38):
be in the upper ranks of nonprofit organization that's just
fundraising and raising money versus to help others to help
up exactly the whole altruism thing versus something that's considered
far more masculine in terms of being in the war
room of campaign strategy. So um wrap report and or

(21:00):
talked to a number of women who are consultants and
also fundraisers and politics and they essentially compiled the laundry
list of all of these presumably female friendly work responsibilities
that we hear over and over again in terms of

(21:22):
many pink collar jobs. So you have the whole thing
of altruism, of humility and putting others first. You're raising
money not for yourself but on behalf of this candidate
and for the community at large, which reminds me of
our conversation with Gina and Ashley from recruit Her when
we talked about negotiating and how it seems to for

(21:43):
salary and how it seems to be so much more
acceptable for a woman to um negotiate for a higher
salary for someone else or based in logic around helping others.
So yeah, same exam act thing, and a lot of
the women, as both a positive and a negative, said

(22:06):
that the duties that come along with fundraising, like event planning,
sending out invitations, and playing hostess are traditionally women oriented
tasks and as Susan Lily, a Republican consultant, put it,
these tasks typically fall on women, whether it's in politics
or a wedding. Well, and the whole idea too, that
it's detail oriented work, um and and therefore appealing to

(22:30):
women and therefore something that women do better than men
is something that we have heard also applied to a
lot of other sectors as well. Um. Not to say that, like,
don't you tell me that women are detail oriented? I
am so sloppy, right, But it's the whole thing of like,
are you saying that being detail oriented and a planner

(22:53):
is only a woman thing? Exactly? Exactly um? And then
there's a whole socialization aspect of it. Um. This was
something that Amy Boone, who started her own consulting firm
before moving over to the Texas Democratic Trust, talked about, saying,
from the time where little girls were conditioned to not

(23:13):
really be the ones raising our hands, so again it's
that that fun fundraising is feminine? Who exactly? And then
Boone went on to explain that it's possible that women
are just getting pigeonholed. She said that it's common when
a woman shows up to work on a campaign without
much experience and without much confidence, the senior staff just

(23:37):
tend to push her over into a junior fundraising role
where she can do things like just stay behind the
scenes planning, making phone calls, planning parties and stuff like that,
just basically assistant role stuff. And so if that's the
position that you're placed in and you do want to advance,
well you're probably just going to continue advancing up that

(23:58):
fundraising ladder. But despite the fact that women are the
overwhelming majority in fundraising if nowhere else in campaign strategy,
they're still not typically the ones making the decisions because,
as Ditmark points out, you might be in fundraising and

(24:18):
you might be brewing in in all of this cash money,
but that's not a like clear cut strategic role the
way that being, for instance, a campaign manager or a
media spokesperson would be. And in a very blatantly sexist
kind of way. Um, some campaigns are simply nervous about

(24:38):
putting women in charge of strategy because it does violate
gender norms in a lot of ways. If we think
of campaigns as going to war, as many political consultants do,
and this was something that Anne Urban, who began professional
campaign work for Republicans way back in nineteen She said,

(24:58):
I think there's an old school conservative, good old boy
inclination to go with a guy because it's too rough
and tumble to be a woman. Yeah. So I mean
that goes hand in hand with the pigeonholing thing and
just pushing a woman off into fundraising. If you just
assume that someone who doesn't look like you is only
going to be good at one thing, or she's not

(25:19):
going to be good at what the thing you're good at,
then how like who's going to break that barrier? Because
if you're just operating on assumptions about what a woman
is cut out for. And I think that the likability
factor plays into this as well, um where you see
women who might be in those more strategic roles shot

(25:40):
calling likelier to be dismissed as bitches. Yeah, And so
a lot of the women that were interviewed, we're talking
about how you know a lot of successful women in
campaigning and campaign strategy and consulting have to be comfortable
with that, you have to be okay with getting called

(26:02):
a bit because it's inevitable. And one woman pointed out,
like a lot of women just aren't comfortable with that,
and especially when you're starting out, and so that could
also get you hamstrung from progressing at the ladder in strategy.
And then you have the optics issue because a you

(26:24):
have um the idea that an attractive woman is going
to be better at raising money because who doesn't want
to give cash to a beautiful woman. Whereas a campaign
manager who's going to be on the road with a candidate,
especially if that candidate is Mail, if you have a
lady traveling alongside him, then might that raise some eyebrows

(26:47):
about how close their relationship really is. And that's something
too that is not exclusive to political consulting, but really
I mean workplaces at LA. It's where it's like, it's
fine if all the guys go out for happy hour
um after work, but if a lady wants to tag along,
then then people might get a little nervous. Well yeah,

(27:10):
and so one of the quotes that really sort of
I had to read a couple of times to make
sure that I was reading it correctly was from that
Republican consultant, Susan Lily, who said, uh, male candidates don't
need to be traveling with a young, attractive female. I
can give the wrong impression even though there's nothing really
wrong with it. So kind of giving into just well,
tongues will wag, so we better just not do it.

(27:32):
You better just avoid it. Um. But there's I mean,
so many other aspects of why women get tripped up
trying to pursue jobs in strategy and consulting. Uh. But
of course these are things that we see in so
many other professional fields, and we will get right back
into them when we come back from a quick break.

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there was this series of interviews that some researchers conducted
with consultants back in two thousand three, and they found

(29:02):
that those consultants, men and women alike, believed that women
in consulting political consulting face different rules of the game,
so to speak, including having to work twice as hard
to be successful in the business, not being taken as
seriously or seen to be as credible by candidates and
the political parties as the men folk, and having to

(29:24):
be careful about being too aggressive in their marketing and
approach to business. So these are not just like think
peace writers talking about this stuff. These are the consultants
themselves talking about the perceptions of women among themselves, among
their own ranks. And it seems like that aggressive penalty
comes up over and over again when you hear from

(29:47):
women in this field. Um Liz Shatter and Powell, who's
the VP of Political Strategies with Bates, Niem and Ink,
which is a democratic direct mail and issue advocacy consulting firm,
said that you have to be aggressive to rise to
the position as an executive director of a committee or

(30:07):
a partner in a consulting firm, which, again you have
that socialization aspect. This is a behavior that women are
socialized from young ages, often against UM, even though many
people in the field embrace it. UM. And you also
have the issue of you know, the Doug stampers, the
men in power who might not be so keen on

(30:30):
giving them a leg up. Yeah, and then a huge
factor UM in the field, just like it is comes
up any time we talk about women who are alive
and having children. Is the whole family and parenting aspect
because if you whether you're a working mom or a

(30:51):
stay at home mom, uh, you're socially expected to be
there for your children and your family more than you're
expected to be at work. It's the whole mommy tracking
issue We've talked about before and Uh. Angela Faulkner, who's
a Republican direct mail consultant, told the Publication Campaigns and
Elections that she felt huge stigma as a mom and

(31:15):
full time consultant, especially when she was traveling overseas for clients.
She talked about how early in her career she actually
felt resentment from other women, Not dudes, not dudes calling
her out and calling her a bad mom, but resentment
from other women who were questioning her decision to work
in Venezuela's recall election rather than stay home with her children. Yeah,

(31:37):
she said, when people talk about family values, it's usually
based on a stable home environment, and many conservatives feel
that a stable home environment requires a mother that isn't
required to travel UM and the the child care aspect
also reminds me of a Glamour magazine piece that we
read profiling UM women in the current election, and one

(32:03):
thing that Whoma Aberdeen said was if Hillary is elected,
what she's going to do the very next day is
turn off her phone and spend the day with her son,
making Impasta and taking him out for ice cream, which
I was like, can I come over a UM, But
it kind of drives home, like I was reminded reading that, like,
oh yeah, you probably do not get to see your

(32:26):
kid all that often because it is a twenty four
seven job. It does make me think of how how
could Doug be a father, I mean stamp, House of Cards,
Doug Stamper and house of cards, like how could he
be let alone? All of the you know, personality court, sociopathy. Yeah,
well that too, um. But you know, it's it's hard

(32:47):
across the board to make time for family or social
life or anything when you are working in a political campaign.
That goes without saying, but it turns out that those
grueling schedules can make certain jobs more difficult than others.
For instance, media consultants typically end up with the hardest
schedules of any operatives because you know, I mean, it
makes sense. You've got to respond rapidly if something happens,

(33:09):
If Donald Trump says yet another thing about women are Muslims,
You've got to have your phone on to be able
to respond, and plus you've got nearly constant travel. And
so that, according to a lot of female operatives interviewed,
is one of the reasons that they're likely fewer women
in media than in places like polling, fundraising or direct mail.
So yet again, for many women in this industry, there

(33:34):
is that double standard, forced choice of motherhood versus career,
and how are you going to make the two work? Together,
and obviously there are plenty of women who are doing
just that, but the issue is that men typically do
not face the same kind of decision making, right, And

(33:56):
I mean, it turns out when we hinted at this earlier,
that party of phili asition is definitely a factor. According
to a study in the Journal of Political Marketing from Tleven,
they wrote that women consultants tend to work for democratic
firms consulting firms more often than Republican led ones, and
that women led firms were more likely to be hired
by democratic rather than Republican candidates. And so basically this

(34:20):
twenty study echoed prior studies that found that not only
are more women consultants Democrats, but Democratic consulting firms are
more likely to have women named as partners, and so
as a result, Democratic candidates are more likely to hire
consulting firms with women partners. It's like gender politics math

(34:43):
literal gender politics. Well, yeah, exactly, Well, and I wonder
if that kind of partisanship in this issue goes to
what Angela Faulkner, who was that Republican direct mail consultant,
talked about in terms of uh CAN servatives having a
very distinct perception of family values that's often a top

(35:08):
conservative platform, and family values often when it comes to
when you look through the Republican lens um often involves
a woman at least closer to home. But I mean
it's not like women aren't out there doing it for themselves.
They are. There are more women these days leading campaigns,
leading superpacks, and heading up consulting firms. One thing I

(35:32):
didn't expect, I guess I should have expected it is
that it's actually really hard to find numbers. You know,
Kristen and I love citing stats. It's like our favorite thing.
We love to give you percentages, but it's hard to
find clear cut percentages and stats when you're dealing with
so many private firms and behind the scenes, uh makeups
and breakdowns of demographics, which again I mean like ridiculous

(35:55):
that that is the case in something that lives and
breathes by data, But of course, I mean it's data
and also image, so there's only select data that you
would probably want visible to the public. Um. But you
do have more women who are starting their own consulting firms,
and it's not just democratic women. You have Katie Packer

(36:19):
Gauge Ashley O'Connor and Christine Matthews who got together and
founded the Republican focused firm Burning Glass Consulting UM, because
the Democratic narrative about the GOP has been the whole
war on women. So these three consultants got together and

(36:40):
we're like, you know, this whole tone deafness issue that
a number of Republican candidates have had when it comes
to women is something that we could really focus on.
And the whole Burning Glass aspect of their name comes
from the idea that they're going to be so laser focused,
like it's like it's sunbeam that could learned through the glass.

(37:02):
I think I got that right, basically, Yeah, exactly. But
according to Sarah Brewer, who's the former associate director of
the Women in Politics Institute an American University, UH found
through her research that female political consultants often work twice
as long in the field before starting their own firms
than men do. And the speculation around that, I mean,

(37:26):
there's a couple of reasons that could be. One, you
need obviously kind of a fat rolodex of clients and
connections to start your own thing, and if you are
not in a client contact heavy position, it's harder to
make those direct connections. There's also the thing that we've
seen so often when we talk about women or really

(37:47):
any minority group, uh, in a professional capacity, that there's
often this need to feel that you have to work
harder to prove yourself. And that makes it sound like
you just internalized that and feel like you have to
do that. But often people around you, I guess in
this case it would be the white guys and working
in the campaign expect you to work harder. Well, And

(38:09):
I mean the very fact that Burning Glass Consulting received
a New York Times profile an interview by Amanda Hess
insulate all of this media coverage because it was three
Republican women, you know, forming this consulting firm, I think
speaks to how you know this this is kind of

(38:29):
a rarity. Oh yeah, I mean, especially when it comes
to Republican consulting, right exactly. Um, But in women ran
more than half of the thirteen most competitive Democratic Senate campaigns,
and that year women were also in charge of two
key campaign committees, the National Republican Congressional Committee and the

(38:50):
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. But uh, those are both back
to being headed by dudes. So it's not like a
permanent change. Um. And again that increase in women operatives
has been stronger on the Democratic side, and in twelve
on the Republican side, there was just one female manager
working on those top thirteen most competitive senter races. So

(39:15):
as we are seeing slowly but surely the numbers of
women in political campaigning increasing, the question is why is
this happening? Um? So it could have to do with
an influx of money into and the professionalization of campaigns,
which creates more opportunities for consultants. Um. I mean, the

(39:37):
way that political campaigns are funded have has been a
major issue on the Democratic side of the presidential race
this year. Um. And you also have a deeper bench
of female operatives who have gradually risen to the top.
Not to mention an increasing focus and just general acknowledge

(40:00):
meant that female voters win elections. I mean, women essentially
are the people who decide who at least gets to
the White House. Yeah. And another big aspect of this
is the proliferation, like dandelions on your front yard, of

(40:20):
super PACs. And those super PACs offer men or women
more job flexibility and and schedule flexibility than working directly
for candidates. And that's so that's attractive to anyone male
or female who has a family or you know, I
don't know, like seventeen cats, like whatever, you know, or
like a bocci ball league on the weekends, like whatever

(40:42):
you want to do to make your life more rewarding,
you would have a little bit more time for it.
And Alexandria lap who's the executive director of the House
Majority Packs, says, yeah, I'm not getting a call at
eleven pm from the D Triple C chair of Congressman
so and so, you sir, to your donors. But it's
different than answering to a politician. And super Packs, by

(41:05):
the way, in case you are not familiar, it's their
job to raise and spend a ton of money, but
they can't donate money directly to candidates. So there is
that lay yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, there is that layer
of separations. So, yeah, you're not answering directly to like
an angry candidate or an angry campaign manager who wants

(41:26):
to talk to you in the middle of the night.
Oh gosh, what if Doug Stamper called you in the
middle of a night chilling. I don't think i'd answer
I don't have the the exact numbers in front of me,
But in terms of women of color and political activism UM,
there's also been an exponential um influx of packs forming

(41:47):
specifically to UM engage those groups. I mean, for instance,
you have Rosario Dawson's co founded Vota Latino UM and
all sorts of groups like that that have risen in
just I mean the past five ten years. Yeah, because
politically you kind of have to fight fire with fire,
and by fire I mean cash. Money's lots and lots

(42:10):
of cash moneys, like a Scrooge McDuck pool of money
to buy ads that's not directly contributing to a politician.
But I know, I know, I just I hate it.
I was thinking today actually, when we were preparing to
come into the studio, Like I looked out the window
wistfully and I just thought, God, I would kill for

(42:35):
candidates who were just humans, you know what I mean.
Like you can like and respect a candidate all you
want all day long, and like get caught up in
the idealism and believe what he or she says and
and be behind them. But God, I would feel so
much better if candidates were just like, yeah, you know,
this thing over here sucks like well, I mean, I

(42:58):
think some of that is due to the fact that
we are a two party system, so you have, you know,
like two people who are going for like such a diverse,
massive group of people. Yeah. I was just so when
Bayner called Chris Lucifer in the flesh, I was just like,

(43:18):
that is I'm not even a Republican. Was that the
realist moment for you? So far? Was a campaign? One
of the realist moments? And I was like, God, that's refreshing. Well.
And one thing we you know, haven't even gotten into
and don't have time to is the rise of the
kind of superstar political manager like a Karl Rove. I mean,

(43:41):
I think that he's probably the most intense example of that.
I mean that that man has really, in a lot
of ways, um changed American culture. I mean, he's responsible,
I think, for a vast majority of the conservative political
climate right now. Well. Yeah, and even with Karl Rove,
though you had Karen Hughes, I think only temporarily. I

(44:04):
don't think she was with George Bush for the long haul.
She had worked with him back in Texas UM and
worked with him on one, if not both, of his
election presidential election campaigns. Um, so you did have a
woman sort of like in the wings behind row. But
for all of his puppet mastering, Karl Rove gets both
the credit and the blame for all of the stuff

(44:27):
that happened in George Bush's presidency. Well, and he's positioned
himself in that way too, because I mean, I don't
know that I've ever seen Karen Hughes on television before,
but when you have Karl Robe all the time, Yeah,
And that's that's one thing we were reading about two
is like how in this modern era you do have

(44:48):
people like Mary Magdalene and James Carville, Karl Rove, Donna Brazil,
people who are political consultants who even like in the
boom times of the seventies and eighties when they first emerged,
still we're behind the scenes and slowly, but surely or
pretty quickly, I guess, they became the talking heads on

(45:08):
your cable news networks, you know, your columnists in newspapers,
and they have become celebrities and pseudo politicians in their
own right. Well yeah, speaking of House of Cards, Dono
Brazil has made two cameos on the show. I mean
James Carvel was in old school. I don't know, like
that is a fact in my brain that Um, I

(45:29):
wish it could be replaced with something more useful. UM.
But I mean James Carvel has made so many cameos
and all sorts of stuff. Um. And but that whole
thing too, I would attribute going back to old j
school days, journalism school where Caroline and I first met. Um.
It's all about the twenty four hour news cycle too,
so of course they're pulling from the stable of people

(45:51):
who are really good about talking politics and also spinning
and kind of you know, uh, shooting from the hip.
The wolf Blitzer. Yeah. I once flew in a plane
with UM and he was carrying a garment bag onto
the plane and it was monogrammed with his wolf initials,

(46:14):
and I was hoping it would just be like an
airbrushed picture of a wolf god. I wish, I wish, um,
But I think the most surprising thing was that his
beard was almost translucent. Strange. I thought you were going
to say it was like a fake Santa beard that
was tied on behind his ears. Also, I wish, but
I want your your wolf Blitzer. Um. I was on

(46:34):
a plane with Kathleen Sebelius, one time former head of
Health and Human Services. We made eye contact when there
was a really annoying woman talking on her cell phone. Kathleen,
I waved to her, um, anyway, see if you're listening,
shout out, um, so anyway. It's kind of obvious and
goes without saying. And in Kristen, you already touched on

(46:56):
this earlier in the podcast that if you don't represent
the population in your campaign, in your strategy, like, it's
obviously going to ding you because you're not going to
be able to fully get the picture of your electorate.
And dip Marius can you imagine um. Dip mar writing
about this, says you have to be able to understand

(47:17):
how to speak to all voters, including hello, over of
the population, which is women voters. And she points out
as if she needs to that listen to you guys.
There is value in women's experiences and women's voices, and
that value can be applied to shaping policy. Okay, of

(47:39):
course I agree with all of that, of course, but
we have a massive glaring exception to the idea that
you will get dinged at the polls if you don't
know how to speak to all voters, and that would
be the runaway success of one Donald A. Trump, formerly

(48:01):
drump But he yet well, yeah, but he's not doing
well in the polls with women, right, but he's still
the as of the time that we are recording this podcast.
Who knows what will have changed when this episode publishes.
He's the presumptive Republican nominee and it doesn't matter. He
doesn't even he doesn't need women. I mean, granted in

(48:21):
the general election, I would be surprised if it didn't
come back to haunt him. Um. But it's I mean,
the the American electorate also is so um. I don't
I don't know how a good word to describe it.
It's so polarized at this point. It's so extremely polarized

(48:43):
that unfortunately, you can make excluding certain people's rights and liberties,
including not only um women, but also Muslims in the
case of the Trump campaign, and really anyone who's not

(49:04):
wearing them make America grade again and not wearing it ironically. Um,
but that you can, you can do that and unfortunately succeed. Yeah.
But like you said, I mean, he's a runaway success
with a very specific demographic. He would not I don't
think do very well in the general against Hilary or Bernie.

(49:29):
We'll see fingers hell. I mean at this point though, UM,
And I'm really curious to hear from our listeners outside
of the US about all of this too, because I'm
sure it just looks like nonsense happening it is. I mean,
I don't, I don't. I can't even make any predictions
at this point. Now. I asked my father who he

(49:52):
was voting for, and he just kind of looks at me,
because he and I do not talk politics, and he
just looked at me and he said, I'll be the
in for Kasik after the contested nomination. So but I mean,
that's another interesting example of you can not have women's
best interest at heart, but if you keep quiet about

(50:15):
how you feel about women as opposed to Donald Trump.
Well maybe Beth Harden his campaign managers had something to
do with that, who knows, UM, But of course it's
not these aren't desirable outcomes, you know, we would like
to see um people elected who do UM value women, UM,

(50:36):
not just as like humans is like beautiful objects like
Donald Trump has, but as UM you know, people who
should be kept in mind when making and passing policy.
And that is one reason why we need to give
a massive shout out to Emily's List, which is a

(50:57):
political action committee for pro choice Democratic female candidates. Um.
If you don't know who they are, go look them up.
Um they're terrific. Um. And just McIntosh, who works with them,
agrees that. I mean, it's simply a practicality to have
women working in your campaign. She says, by having women

(51:21):
and leadership roles, you're going to have more needed perspectives
about messaging, reaching voters. All of that. When she was
speaking to Vocative Well, what I thought was so interesting
and telling. Remember that two thousand three consultant study that
I mentioned a little while ago. Yes, yes, rewind. If

(51:42):
you don't on your tape deck, your podcast tape deck, rewind,
this comes out on cassettes, right yeah, well how yeah,
people order them on those. Um you remember those like
cassette services like Columbia, like Titus Andromeda, say Schmidt subscribed
to exactly. Um, so you know they talked to a
bunch of cans Alton's male and female, and seventy percent

(52:02):
of the women they talked to and just thirty percent
of the men believed that women brought a unique perspective
to the campaign and that this perspective could be used
strategically to win elections. So interesting, because then, if you
don't believe that women have a unique perspective, and you
are accustomed to hiring and promoting people who are like you,

(52:28):
why why would you make a special effort to bring
women in. Yeah. Again, I feel like this is just
a microcosm of issues that we see across industries right well,
which is why so many women interviewed in the articles
that we read for this episode cited the importance of
mentors who can help guide you through those gender expectations,
through those mind field this political mind fields, and the

(52:48):
importance of women helping and hiring other women. It's not uncommon,
according to a lot of the women we read, for
women in campaigns and consulting firms to band together, at
least within their own party and commit to helping bring
up promising young women that live Chatter and Powell, who
we cited earlier, encourages female candidates and female oriented packs

(53:09):
to work only with female consultants, and it's worth noting
that women candidates do, in fact tend to hire more
women to work on their campaigns than male candidates do,
and she says if we don't help our own, we
will never be successful at tearing down walls. Um She
said that in one campaign that she was working on,
a male staff member, a Democratic male staff member, told

(53:33):
her that he she couldn't run one of his top
Senate campaign races because quote, I was female, and none
of his candidates would take orders from a woman. That's
that's my eloquent response to that. Yeah, and so. Um
Pal also writes that women can at least be there

(53:54):
for each other to help encourage one another to stick
it out. She says women are way more likely and
men in this field of work to basically, I mean,
for lack of a better word, and I'm just gonna
use the buzzword, but lean out when they decide that
they want a quote unquote real job that will afford
them some free time to have a family or whatever.

(54:14):
Um and so she envisions Pala visions this landscape where
you have training seminars that are exclusively for female operatives,
given exclusively by female consultants that would then after the fact,
offer a consistent stream of mentoring support to help women
stick it out. Or really just to help women plan
their career trajectories in whatever political direction they want to go. Yeah,

(54:38):
I mean it's an exhausting job. I can only imagine
UM getting into this field. So, um, I'm curious to
hear if there are any listeners who are currently campaigning
for UM for candidates right now, or who have done
so in the past, who can give us more feet

(54:59):
on the street and side into this. And before we
get into listener mail, I want to quickly correct myself. Um,
just a minute ago, when we were mentioning Kimmy Schmidt,
I refer to Titus Andromedas. His name is Titus Andromedon.
Tinus Andromedas is actually a band that I used to
listen to all the time. So listeners, don't don't worry.

(55:23):
Don't worry. I know, I know. Um, So I just
wanted to make that very important point clear. Sorry, I
was ore. I was just envisioning. I didn't even hear
you finish that because I was just envisioning tit Us
breaking that tape and having so um. Yeah, I just
I just assumed you said it correctly. Well, listeners, now

(55:43):
we want to hear from you mom stuff at how
Stuff Works dot Com is our email address. You can
also tweet us at mom Stuff podcast or messages on Facebook.
And if by chance you know Donna Brasilt Pulleys, send
her our best and we've got a couple of messages
this year with you. Right now, I have a letter

(56:05):
here from Sarah in response to our episode on the
comfort women of World War Two. She says, I was
surprised to discover a bit of my own family history.
My grandfather is a renowned cardiologist now, but got his
start as a brigade surgeon in the Army during World
War Two in the Pacific Theater. For most of my life,
he never ever talked about the war. However, as I've

(56:26):
gotten older I'm thirty two and have since enlisted in
the Air Force, he felt comfortable enough telling me bits
and pieces about his service. Shortly after the war ended,
my grandfather was in Japan trying to prevent epidemics from
breaking out among the troops. One of his duties while
there was apparently delousing the women high ranking military officers
slept with. I never realized quite what that meant until

(56:50):
right now. That's such a terrible position to be in,
I guess I now know why he never wanted to
talk to me about that job in particular. Thanks for
the clarity, and thanks for everything you ladies do. I
listen to your podcast all the time. Well thanks, Sarah, So,
I gotta let her here from Lena offering some clarifications
and corrections about that episode. Um so so, she says, we,

(57:14):
referring to Koreans, aren't just upset about the comfort women issue.
Japan to date has never actually apologized, and they continue
to refuse to do so. The last so called apology
was more of a we're sorry you went through that.
In recent years, Japan tried to eliminate a monument to
comfort women from various countries, including Korea, the Philippines, China,

(57:37):
and other countries. And she goes on to say, I
get the things happened and need to be discussed, but
depicting Korean culture as one where men would prostitute their
own daughters honestly makes it sound like you're trying to
reduce the seriousness of what Japan did in numerous countries.
As you mentioned, one of the worst things these women
face post war was a social shame of their experience

(57:58):
and the ways in which they were to be early abused.
Being raped wasn't always seen as a sign that you
were a victim and will take care of you. They
were tainted, so everything they went through shouldn't be minimized. China,
in particular shouldn't be forgotten. Your government and people have
been extremely active in pushing for apologies and some sign
that they might not repeat the same acts if given

(58:19):
the chance. Korea's government has let us down, and China's
government has continued to pursue numerous issues. I'm not trying
to be harsh, and I love all of your podcasts.
I found time and again that your research on numerous
Asian issues has been extremely well done. This just happens
to be a particularly sore spot that isn't just a
problem for former quote unquote comfort women. A term that

(58:40):
really needs to die anyway. It was created by Japan
specifically to try to tone down the horrific nature of
what was done to them. So thank you for writing
in Lena, and thanks to everybody who's written into us.
Mom sab at House suppark dot com is where you
can send your letters and for links sold our social media,
as well as all of our blogs, videos and podcasts.

(59:01):
With our sources so you can learn more about women
and political campaigns. Head on over at stuff Mom Never
told You dot com for more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff Works dot com