BREAKING THE GLASS CEILING: WOMEN IN AMERICAN POLITICS

CAROL HARDY-FANTA:  Good afternoon.  Hello.  

Good afternoon everybody.  Welcome to the Kennedy Library forum, and the opening event of the New England Women’s Political Summit.  My name is Carol Hardy-Fanta and I’m the Director of the Center for Women in Politics & Public Policy at UMass Boston’s McCormack Graduate School of Policy Studies.  Our center has as its mission to promote women’s leadership in politics and policymaking by providing a graduate education for women, conducting research that makes a difference in women’s lives, and serving as a resource for the empowerment of women from diverse communities across Massachusetts and New England.  

One of the important ways we fulfill our mission is to hold forums such as this to engage the public in issues of concern to women.  Almost one year ago I came to the Kennedy Library and Museum to explore their interest in a vision I had.  To hold a summit for women across New England, to tackle the problem of the glass ceiling in politics for women in the nation as well as the region.  And the problem is severe.  As just one example, when Geraldine Ferraro ran as the vice presidential nominee in 1984 did we really think that it would be 20 years later and the prospects for women in the White House are no brighter?  We’re sorry about Geraldine Ferraro’s illness that made her not be able to come today, but her spirit is in the room with us.  

Furthermore, ten years ago the media declared that it was the year of the woman. But while there have been some gains, and notable ones, the actual overall progress of women in political representation and influence, as measured by the percentage of women in elected office, we have not actually seen the increase we would like to see.  In some areas we’ve seen a decline.  In no way have women achieved parity in political representation or influence.  

Tom Putnam and John Shattuck of the Kennedy Library and Museum agreed to cosponsor this panel of nationally prominent women on the challenges they have faced.  These are women who have tapped on, made a crack in, or indeed broken through the ceiling of political representation and have achieved distinction in the world of politics on a national scale.  

This forum, however, is not only one of the wonderful series of the Kennedy Library Forums the institution is famous for, and I thank John Shattuck for cosponsoring it with us, it’s also an exciting kick-off to the two-day New England Women’s Political Summit.  It will set the stage for, and provide the national context for, the summit to follow.  So that those of you who are attending this as a Kennedy Library Forum, or who are listening to this on WBUR on rebroadcast, I extend a welcome from the Center for Women in Politics & Public Policy at UMass Boston.  

I would especially like to acknowledge and welcome all the women from outside the Boston area and those from Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont.  We have two hundred women here today who have traveled to Boston for the New England Women’s Political Summit and I would especially like to extend a warm welcome to you for making this trip.  These include many state legislators and other prominent women from these states.  And of course welcome to all of you from Massachusetts as well.  

For the 400 of you who have registered for the first ever New England Women’s Political Summit, what you are about to hear is just the beginning of an exciting series of events today and tomorrow that we hope will have a significant impact on removing the ceiling, whether it be glass, plastic, or steel, all together so that women can participate in and contribute fully to the political life of this nation.  Thank you very much, and John would you like to come up and introduce our panel?  

[Applause]

JOHN SHATTUCK:  Thank you very much Carol.  I’m John Shattuck, the CEO of the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation, and I just want to say what a wonderful moment this is for the Kennedy Library Foundation this afternoon to be able to have the honor to co-sponsor, along with UMass Boston, the leader of this forum and this discussion over the course of these two days, to sponsor this summit for women across New England.  And I want to thank especially Carol HardyFanta for being at the heart of this organization and welcome our wonderful Chancellor JoAnn Gora from UMass Boston, who is, I should say, a member of our Kennedy Library Board.  And we’re very proud of our Board, including UMass Boston at the very top.  

And I also want to recognize before starting the forum the supporters of the Kennedy Library Forum Series: Fleet Boston Capital, The Lowell Institute, WBUR, The Boston Globe, and Boston.com.  And, of course, WBUR will broadcast this panel across New England.  

It’s a special honor for me to welcome the members of our distinguished panel here this afternoon.  Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez represents the California 47^th Congressional District.  She was elected to Congress in November 1996 and was re-elected to her current fourth term in November 2002 with 60% of the vote. [Applause] 

This year Congresswoman Sanchez was selected by the Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi to serve as the third-ranking Democrat on the Select Committee for Homeland Security, the most important committee today perhaps in the Congress.  She has championed federal initiatives to involve parents in their children’s schools; she has successfully saved national gender equity in our federal education programs, and she has spearheaded efforts to promote school safety.

Our second panelist, as Governor of Massachusetts, Jane Swift rose to the challenge of holding the highest job in our state.  In addition to being the first woman Governor in history of Massachusetts, and a very long history at that, Governor Swift is also the first governor in the United States to give birth to twins while serving in office. [Laughter] [Applause]

Her career as an elected official began at the age of 25 when she became the youngest woman ever elected to the Massachusetts State Senate.  She also quickly became the youngest woman in Massachusetts Senate history to hold a leadership position when she rose to the rank of Assistant Minority Leader in the Massachusetts Senate.  

As Carol has indicated, we regret to announce that Geraldine Ferraro, a wonderful friend and leader across our country and friend of the Kennedy Library, regrets that she’s unable to join us this afternoon because of illness.  And we hope very much to reschedule an opportunity for her to be here in the near future as she has been in the past.  

Our moderator this evening is Martha Raddatz, Senior National Security Correspondent for ABC News.  Most recently Martha was the Pentagon correspondent for National Public Radio where she reported on foreign policy, defense, and intelligence issues.  And I should say where I came to know her:

when our children were at school together.  And at least one of our children is here today.  She was also involved in reporting on the war in Bosnia, and I was a State Department official and diplomat, and that’s where we became acquainted. 

Martha, I’m very pleased to turn this over to you after finally announcing that you, of course, have won so many distinguished awards for your reporting that I can’t mention them all.  But we’re very honored to have you hear with us today.  Martha…

MARTHA RADDATZ:  Thank you, thank you.  

It’s great to be here and one thing John did not mention is that I used to work for the local affiliate, the ABC affiliate here, for many, many years, twelve years, so it’s great to be back home here and see a lot of old friends.  

I in the last couple of weeks have been thinking about this panel, and thinking about the gains that women have made.  And I ran across an Op-Ed piece that I thought was great, and it’s particularly titled well today, because it’s called “Girls, Girls, Girls”.  Pretty good for us, I think.  This is written by a retired army officer, just so I can bring a little bit of my world into yours.  And so you don’t stereotype all army officers.  He says, “The greatest social change in the history of humanity happened in the United States over the past 50 years.  Women broke their ancient chains and became men’s partners instead of remaining men’s property.  This shift in the status of women is the decisive strategic factor of our time.  Women’s self-emancipation is a primary source of America’s present power, wealth, and social energy.  It is also the fundamental reason why we’re getting ahead economically.  Rosie the Riveter is in the board room, she flies combat aircraft, she’s a lawyer, a doctor, a cop, and sometimes still a factory worker.  In every role she fills she’s the real hero of postmodern America.  Never before has any society been so open to talent, no matter its gender, race, ethnicity, or religion.  Certainly there are still glass ceilings, but another one shatters each day.  Human capital is a nation’s ultimate resource and no society has ever used its human capital as efficiently and effectively as we do.”

I thought that was great until I opened up the New York Times Magazine this morning, which says, “Many high-powered women today don’t ever hit the glass ceiling, choosing to leave the workplace for motherhood.  Is this the failure of one movement or the beginning of another?”  We’re going to talk about that in a minute.  First of all I’m very honored to be with both of you, and I’m sorry Geraldine Ferraro isn’t here as well, so I would like to start with both of your thoughts about what Geraldine Ferraro meant for you, did for you, as a woman in politics.  Governor, why don’t you start. 

JANE SWIFT:  I think that it is important, and I probably can speak more credibly as a mother of three daughters than from my own experiences, for our children, and for girls, to see women in particular roles.  And in a very meaningful way I think when you see someone who looks like you, or who you could envision being, doing something, then it opens up your mind to the world of possibilities.  And I think certainly Geraldine Ferraro was that representation to many women who saw her taking her licks just like the guys, but moving forward and making her case to the American people.  

And that has at times been brought home to me.  I had the great privilege of serving as the Governor of this Commonwealth, and that brings with it wonderful opportunities that lose something in the translation.  But because we’re in the same season I can try to relate to you an experience I had in Salem, Massachusetts, as luck would have it on Halloween Day.  I was not in Salem to celebrate Halloween.  I was there to talk about education, which is something I enjoyed talking about and working on a great deal when I was Governor.  

And there was a little girl who her teacher and principal in the cafeteria, I think she was in first grade but she could’ve been in kindergarten, sort of pushed her up very reluctantly.  She was reluctant to see me, and had her recount with some assistance the fact that she had decided that she wanted to be Governor when she grew up.  And her teachers later told me that she had made this decision and she was one of the shyest kids in her class, and told her parents that after seeing me on television one night.  

Now it’s probably the only person that I inspired in my appearance that night on television [Laughter] but it just demonstrates …  And this doesn’t happen a lot because the state of Massachusetts is a big state, but I actually ran into her father at another event several months later, who told me that even though she was reticent to share that experience with me when we had met in the-- she was much more interested in telling me she was going to be a kitten for Halloween-- in the cafeteria on Halloween day that it had meant something to her.  

And so I think to the degree that we have a visual representation of the enormous opportunities that I do believe exist for our daughters, that that’s important.  And I think we’re all grateful to Geraldine Ferraro for being that representation.  Having the courage to put herself out there in a number of different races and a number of different times, and I too am sorry she’s not with us today to hear that gratitude from those of us who had the wonderful opportunity to follow in her footsteps.  

RADDATZ:  I just followed her around that year, if I recall.  That was also great. 

LORETTA SANCHEZ:  Of course we all love Geraldine.  And, you know, at that time, during that election, I actually was living in Europe.  I was finishing up my master’s in business administration; I did international finance.  And I lived in Italy and I was trying to get a job in Italy.  And, of course, women really aren’t allowed to work there, at least not out front.  Maybe you work in the submerged economy selling something.  But it was just a very interesting experience trying to break into the work world in Italy.  

And at the same time I was reading the international newspapers that would tell us that Geraldine was the running mate, and she was out there campaigning, and I’m thinking what a great place America is, you know!  Why is it that I’m here in Italy and I can’t get a job because I’m a woman?  And people would actually say to me, “You’re a woman.”  And so I’m thinking, I can’t wait to get back to the United States and get a job there, I’ll show them.  So I come back to the United States and lo and behold I did fourteen years in the investment banking industry, and I found out sometimes it’s just as difficult for women to get the job they want out here in America as it was to try to find any kind of decent job in Italy. 

She definitely broke barriers for a lot of people.  Young people, I think, in particular.  Because, for example, in my district lives the young lady who’s in Geraldine’s book on the shoulders of her father with Geraldine’s t-shirt during the campaign.  And I look at this and I see our young ladies moving forward and wanting to be in politics and I think she was an incredible breaker of the barrier.  And it’s always important to have a visual person in front of you.  And I think back to this election that we had in the Congress, for example, of Nancy Pelosi being our Democratic leader.  I happen to hang out in the Blue Dog Caucus of the Democrats, those are the southern white boys [Laughter].  The conservative … 

Well I come from Orange County, the most Republican place in the nation.  But I’m a Democrat in case you didn’t know that [Laughter].  So …  You can clap for that. [Applause]

So I’m hanging out in this caucus and these guys are like …  We had decided that we needed Nancy as our leader, me and the Californian Democrats, right?  Because we used to have someone in leadership and they stepped down.  We went for two years in a void.  We decided we’re the largest contingent to the Democratic Caucus, we need to have a Democrat from California in the leadership, we saw that there was going to be an opening in about 18 months, and, you know, we wanted George Miller to run.  Or well that’s what Nancy said, “Let’s get George Miller to run.”  Well George didn’t want to do it.  

And so we were all scratching our heads and I kept telling George, “Nancy, Nancy, Nancy.  You know we’ve got to run Nancy; she’s perfect for this.”  Of course Nancy never saw herself as a leader.  I mean she didn’t see herself in the elected leadership.  So we finally convinced her to do it, but it was real interesting to watch her because it was like, do I have the qualifications?  Do I?  It’s like c’mon Nancy, I mean you’ve got great skills here.  So we talked her into doing it, and I realized at that point that Nancy hadn’t seen that possibility for herself because there hadn’t been a woman in an elected, high elected position like that.  

And, of course, to convince our own Democratic caucus, majority being male, was even more difficult.  And it was interesting to see the double standard that gets applied to a woman who decides to do something even within the Democratic Party.  I kept asking her, let’s get you going, let’s get you going, let’s start the race. 

“No, no, it’s too early.  There’s no position.”

So what Nancy, you know?  She goes okay, one day she said, “Okay what do we do?” And I said, we’re going to hold these dinner parties.  And I’m going to invite my 15 best friends in the Congress.  And we’re going to feed them, feed them, ply them with liquor [Laughter], and we’ll get these guys to commit to you.  So I start holding these dinner parties where we’d get like out of the 15 we’d get ten of them to say yes.  And pretty soon we had a good amount, and then I got their friends to …  You know, I ran out of friends in the Congress [Laughter].  

And then we got some of those guys to get their friends in, and pretty soon, you know, it was about 210 Democrats.  You need about 108 votes to win.  We had about 100 committed to, and all of a sudden I get a call from the reporter of The Hill, the rag on everything that goes on in the Congress, about how the opposition is now complaining that we started the race too early.  

And my comment in the paper was something to the effect of, “If we would wait for these guys to tell us when the election was going to start, it would be the day after they had 100 votes lined up.”  [Applause]

So this whole issue of the vision, of seeing women actually break those barriers, regardless of whether they’re Republicans or Democrats, is very important to young women I think.

RADDATZ:  When you watch Geraldine Ferraro, or when you watch any woman in a position of prominence, do you find yourself doing what the media always talks about, which is scrutinizing more because they’re women?  And do you ever, either one of you, remember anything specific about “Oh, I wish she hadn’t said that, or I wish she hadn’t done that.”  Maybe you should talk about this one, Governor.

SWIFT:  I probably shouldn’t.  I have a well-documented ability to get myself in trouble. [Laughter]

SANCHEZ:  Me too. [Laughter]

RADDATZ:  I can’t imagine you ever saying anything you didn’t mean to say.

SWIFT:  It’s not that I didn’t mean it, it’s that I shouldn’t have said it. [Laughter] [Applause]

SWIFT:  I think that there is somehow this belief that all of the time women think differently than men.  And, in fact, that’s not the case.  And we are prone to the same wonderful attributes and less-endearing qualities that some of our male counterparts are.  I do believe that we, and I’ll admit that I, tend to apply the same maybe higher standard, or different standard.  I always think it’s important that we know that the standards often are different.  That doesn’t mean they always work to our disadvantage.  

There are times …  I think back to my first race where I’d be willing to bet that the seven-year state representative who ran against me for the State Senate-- I was 25years-old, he had a very accomplished background in the House of Representatives-- would articulate that my appearance and my gender and my youth-- which he I think early on calculated would be detriments in that particular political year -- were probably the strongest recommendation that I had, not knowing it, for people to vote for me.  Because people were demanding change.  They didn’t like the status quo. And a 47-year-old male lawyer on a billboard looked like the status quo, and a 25-year-old woman did not look like the status quo.  

And so I do think people respond to us differently.  But I also know from experience, and I’m certain had I lost that first race I would’ve done something sensible like go to law school and never have done all the things that happened since, so I’m always facing the reality that while yeah we might be judged differently, or we may be different, that’s not always accruing to the negative.  I think the trick is to figure out when the things about us that the general public, who are the electorate, perceive as different, how do they accrue to our benefit, and how do we play up those things.  Because it’s all about winning in the end.  And how do we at the same time that wonderful people like the Center For Women In Politics are trying to change what is, how do those of us who are running try to minimize the perceptions that people might have that would hurt us and elevate and put forward a stronger argument for those perceptions people may have about women’s leadership that help us in a given context.  

Because the political climate matters.  I think your former Governor, current Governor who’s soon to be former Governor, would agree with that.  Many times you can’t rise above the current political climate.  So the trick is whether you’re a woman or a man to understand how people perceive you, what their belief system is, and without being dishonest, utilize that to put forward the best possible argument for your candidacy.  

RADDATZ:  You both talk about having this visual image of a politician with Geraldine Ferraro on the national stage.  But whenever I come to anything important still, whether it’s …  Certainly at the Pentagon this happens, on the Hill, I still look out in those scenes and say, “Nobody can tell me this is not still a man’s world.”  There are not a lot of female faces on the Hill.  There are not an enormous amount of female faces in any localities.  Why not, and what can you do to change it? 

SANCHEZ:  Well, first of all, you have to win elections.  I mean that’s what you have to do.  You have to win elections.  And the first thing we have is that women don’t make themselves candidates.  And, you know, they think politics is dirty, they don’t want to do it, they don’t see themselves in that role …

RADDATZ:  But so do men, so do men.  So start there.  

SANCHEZ:  Oh, no, stop already.  

[simultaneous conversation]  

SANCHEZ:  Look, we go and we ask a man to run for a Congressional seat.  And he starts ticking off all the things that he needs.  Well the Democratic Party’s got to give me 2 million dollars, and I need this fundraiser, and I need that pollster.  I mean he’s making demands.  And we go and we ask a woman to run and she’s like, “Well, am I qualified?”  I mean they’re the most qualified people in the world but they doubt themselves because, you know, it’s the same thing like Nancy said, “Well , could I be a leader?”  Because we don’t see ourselves in those roles.  

So the first thing is women have got to decide they’re just going to do it, it’s going to be ugly.  They’re going to throw garbage at you all day long.  But you have got to become candidates before we’re ever even going to get you elected.  Because if you’re not on the ballot you can’t get elected.  Well there was a woman actually that got a write-in ballot, it was great to see in California, but anyway.  Pretty much you’ve got to be on the ballot in order to win.  That’s the first thing.  

The second thing.  The institutions, the political parties, the machinery, the money raising, whether it’s Republican or Democrat.  And I’m a Democrat.  I love being a Democrat.  I think we have great policies for a woman and things of that sort.  But I’m talking about the machinery of the parties in particular; it’s all run by Anglo males.  And it’s for Anglo males.  And pretty much they don’t take a look at women, they don’t consider women, they look at themselves in the same, you know …  If we’re looking for a Congressional candidate it’s usually an Anglo male colleague of mine who’s the recruiter, and he goes out and he calls his friends at the state level.  Who’s the state senator there?  Well usually it’s a white male and he’s got the best name ID so let’s go talk to him and give him the goods and have him run.  

They never sit there and go, well there might not be a woman who hangs out there as a state senator but maybe there’s a good business woman, or there’s someone involved in the community.  So the recruiting doesn’t happen for women, the money doesn’t happen for women, the machinery of the parties don’t …  And this happens …  Look, I’m in the Republican Orange County.  They don’t run women there either.  Women have to run against the Republican machinery.  Just like in a lot of cases any of the women who have gotten to the Congress have usually run against the Democratic machinery or whatever the machinery is.  

So we don’t have the institutions, whether it’s the DNC or the RNC or anything like this.  They really aren’t ready to hand over the power to women.  You know power is never given.  You always have to take it.  You know we do not control those levers of power.  We make it despite the fact that they put all the obstacles in front of us.  And they don’t tell us the rules of the game.  They tell us the formal rules; they don’t tell us the real, informal rules.  Like money counts in an election.  It’s like, oh you’re so nice, oh you have a good presence, oh you’re so good on policy, oh this and that …  It’s like, oh, you should run, you speak well.  What they don’t tell you is how can you raise 2 million dollars?  We don’t know the real rules.

RADDATZ:  And how do you figure those out Governor Swift?  How did you figure out those rules?  Or some of them anyway.

SWIFT:  I don’t want to be disagreeable, but I believe the reason that Paul Cellucci asked me to be his running mate in 1998 was because I had raised a million dollars in a Congressional run a year earlier.  And because I had a geographic base that was different than his that in a close election mattered.  So I think that the first thing we have to do is not focus as much on all the barriers, and start focusing, to a certain degree, on the opportunities and what a huge difference you can make when you’re there.   

And I’ll tell you how I raised a million dollars.  It’s probably the same way the Congresswoman raised a million dollars.  I asked people for it.  It’s a shocking admission.  But people also don’t give you money unless you ask for it.  Now when I went to campaign school, and I would bet you get the same instructions at the Democratic campaign school as you did at the Republican campaign school, which is to call people who have money and ask them if they can give it to you.  I knew that I wouldn’t like doing that.  And alas I did not like doing that.  But I knew that I liked losing less.  So I decided that I would call and ask people for money.  And it was really frustrating to me that the more time I spent asking people to give me money, the more money I raised.  And the more money I raised, the more people were willing to give me money.  

And so I think there are good organizations now, bi-partisan and partisan, whether it’s WISH on the Republican side, or The Women’s Campaign Fund, who are giving candidates those instructions.  And I think it’s important for us to tell all of you who are at a certain level, or thinking of running, that actually if you do the things they tell you, it works.  Or at least try it and see if it works.  But for me it’s a very different mode of campaigning.  I loved campaigning for the State Senate where I could go out and shake hands with people and stand in front of, you know, minor league baseball stadiums and talk to little kids.  That was nice because it both worked and it was effective, and it also was something I enjoyed.  I didn’t enjoy so much when I was running for Congress, sitting in my house for six hours each week, calling people, asking them for money.  But I did enjoy having enough money to tell my story on television, and to run a credible race.  I had not to that date lost a race but my insight, and I’m not particularly self-reflective, but my insight that I would hate losing turned out to be true.  [Laughter]

RADDATZ:  So how do you stimulate young women?  Let’s talk to young women, let’s talk to my 22-year-old daughter there.  How do you stimulate young women to go into politics?  Particularly you who just had a lot of rotten things to say about it.

SANCHEZ:  Hell I love politics.  Okay, well, first of all, look.  I was working in the investment banking industry, okay, so that’s totally white male run.  It’s no different.  People ask me how different it is to work in the Congress; it’s not that much different.  You know I walked into the Congress the first day …  Now remember I’m from California, I’m from a pretty diverse kind of a state.  And I go walking into the Capitol on my first day and I walk in there and …  I remember just my mouth dropped open.  Because, you know, it’s older Anglo males.  I mean that’s the majority of what sits there.  So how do we stimulate young women to be in that chamber also?  We have to begin at a young age with them.  

At the same time that I got elected there was this guy-- he took his dad’s seat-- who was a Democrat.  He had run for the Congress; he was not yet 25.  You have to be 25 in order to be put into the House of Representatives.  He was 24; he would be 25 by the time it was time to swear him in.  But when he won his election he was 24.  I mean here’s a guy that started running from the very get-go.  So that when he gets into the House he’s 25, so that when he’s got 20 years seniority he owns the place.  

You know women don’t do that.  I mean here’s Nancy Pelosi, she’s six-- Well I don’t want to tell her age [Laughter].  But I mean she’s over 60, let’s put it that way.  Almost all the women in the House are over 60.  Some 70.  We just lost Patsy Mink last year in her 80’s.  I mean when I got to the House the women were so giddy.  And I didn’t realize why, and they said, you don’t understand, you’re coming to the House at 36.  And you’re going to have enough time to get seniority, we’re going to be able to place you well on committee; you’re going to be able to make it to the White House.  [Applause]

You know whereas most of them had other things.  Had their kids, worked at the local level, got into politics at 50 or so, you know when they got into the House it was too late to get seniority.  They just didn’t see it there.  And I was kind of laughing because I’m thinking if they’ve got to be 25 when we get them in … 

Like this guy who came in, this guy who came in at 24 but, you know, really was 25.  And it was just so interesting because these guys just have a different frame of mind.  He came in and I said, you know we were being asked what committees do you want to sit on.  He goes, “Oh I’m going to be on Ways & Means.”  Well that’s the taxing committee.  This guy had gone to college, he was in law school, he ran for Congress, he’d never had a job, and yet he thought he could tax people [Laughter].  

I said to him, “I don’t think so.”  [Laughter]  [Applause]  To this day he’s not on the taxing committee and there’s a good reason why.  But they just think they can.  So we have got to raise our young ladies to think they can.  I look at my sister she’s …  You know people say “you’re so young” when they meet me.  My sister, she’s in the Congress, she’s ten years younger.  [Applause]  Ten years younger.  She has a degree from Berkeley, she speaks four languages, she’s a UCLA Law graduate, she’s a civil rights attorney, she was head of the labor movement in my county, and now she’s in the Congress.  That’s prepared.  That’s what we need to do.  

We need to start them young, we need to tell them they can, we need to push them to have the pedigree that they’re going to need to get to these positions, we need to put them on campaigns, and we’ve got to make them understand that even though they’re learning to raise money or they’re learning to walk precinct, they’re not going to do that all their lives for this guy who’s going to be the candidate. 

They’ve got to learn it so they can decide that they like it, so that we can run them.  I really feel that that’s the way we break those barriers. [Applause]

RADDATZ:  Want to take a crack at that one?

SWIFT:  I think that the only thing I would say to build on the Congresswoman’s statement is we also have to share with them that while there may be things that are hard, life is hard.  I think we all tell our kids that every single day, particularly when we don’t have another good answer.  But you know, life is hard.  And there are a lot of things you’ll do that will be hard, but you know what, it’s wonderful.  I have memories and had experiences that I’ll have for the rest of my life of being able to help someone, or make a difference on an issue that I cared about, that I never imagined that I would have, that I’m extremely grateful for.  

And maybe we need to have forums where we don’t just talk about how hard it is, but we talk about the wonderful things that you get to do.  Because there is no better feeling than seeing a problem, and we all see problems every day, but being in a position where you can fix the problem.  Now you also have those days where you find a problem that you don’t know the answer or the perfect fix to but it’s not for power’s sake, but seeing a problem like foster children who never got placed in a foster home and turn 18 and they go to school.  

Ten percent of kids who age out of our foster program in Massachusetts were going to college when the statewide average was something like 75% or even higher.  Actually it kind of surprised me how relatively easy it was, all due respect to my former legislative colleagues, we didn’t need them to make it happen.  So we called in some folks from the Higher Education Department and said, you know, we want you to offer free tuition and board to kids who age out of the foster system.  There’s a tiny percentage of them who are in that situation, and we did it.  And that is actually a pretty great feeling to be able to do.  So we need to be able to tell more of those stories I think.  [Applause]

RADDATZ:  I want to go back to the New York Times Magazine today.  I don’t know how many of you saw it.  But it’s the cover story here about-- If I can find the cover here-- “Why don’t more women get to the top?  They choose not to.”  And in this article, which is excellent, and they point out, as Governor Swift pointed out to me today, a lot of people don’t choose to work, so we will say that right away.  But this talks about a lot of young women and older women who are law school graduates, who’ve been in politics, who’ve done all kinds of amazing things, and they want out, and they want home, and they want to spend time with their families.  

I have to say that I reflect on this all the time, and I think about what I tell young women who say how do you do that, how do you do this, how do you have two kids, how do you?  And I never, ever say anymore “Oh you can do it all.”  I never say that.  I’m very, very careful about that.  To say that it’s hard.  That it is difficult.  That there is a serious degree of management that goes on between both of them.  And all women do this, and men do it as well.  But are women choosing this over careers because of mistakes perhaps that the women’s movement made?  Because of what women were told going into life, or going into careers?  Were we in a way too optimistic about what you can do?

SWIFT:  I talk a lot about how the conversations I have with my children, my daughters, might be different than the ones I had at home.  But I don’t blame women who broke down all those barriers that gave me the wonderful opportunities that I’ve had.  And I also don’t think we can expect those women who were breaking down the barriers but didn’t have the experience to have somehow seen into a crystal ball in the future, and told us how hard it was going to be when they didn’t know because they were too busy trying to create the opportunities.  They didn’t necessarily always have them.  

I think, and you issued the caveat and I will …  First of all, as public policy folks-- and I’m not one anymore so this is advice, probably unwanted advice-- first of all, we need to focus more of our efforts in creating more parity on the 70% of women who don’t have choices.  

And then I think [Applause]-- Rather than engaging in a debate, and I’m susceptible to it, I was sharing earlier-- my sister, who’s going to kill me, my sister has a Master’s from Penn.  And she’s home with her two children and we have, not debates, discussions all the time about the different choices that we made.  And I think what we don’t want to have is this belief that for the percentage, small percentage, of women who do have choices that your choice is right and your choice is wrong.

I think we should be glad that more women have more choices [Applause].  Try to provide more choices to more women in the lower income levels, and then figure out what new challenges that creates in the workforce, and what additional barriers we need to break down.  And one of those barriers is if you have the luxury to choose not to work for pay, because I will tell you I spent a little time at home before I went back to work full time, that’s harder work than what I do every day.  Taking care of three young children.  But those who choose not to work for pay, how do we help them better integrate back into the workforce?  Because there really hasn’t been a pattern of women totally stopping work, who have MBA’s, who have law degrees, and how do they re-integrate?  I think some good people are starting to think through those issues, but that’s going to be the next challenge.  The question is can they come back without …  I don’t think we should all get mad at them because they decide not to do it.  I think we should celebrate that choice.

RADDATZ:  But tell me what you think it says about society.  I don’t see many articles about men suddenly saying, you know what, I think I’ll go home and spend more time with …

SWIFT:  No, you know, I can tell you from that experience …  There was a front page article in Newsweek, in April before we invaded Iraq …  I don’t read things as much …

RADDATZ:  February 

SWIFT:  Okay, then or March maybe.  Maybe it was after, but anyway, there was an article this spring in Newsweek about the growing number of men who are choosing to stay at home.  And some startling and disturbing poll results, it didn’t surprise me at all, that a lot of people think that that’s not a good thing to have women working and earning more money than their husbands, and men staying at home.  So when people choose different arrangements, change is threatening.  And so some people, rather than dealing with their own issues of how they’re going to manage things, would rather sort of talk about the bad way everybody else they know is doing it. 

So I think that there is a growing number of men who are choosing to stay at home.  Again it’s in this very small percentage of people who have choices.  But we have different sentiments about that.  Nobody gets mad at my husband that he’s letting down all of malehood by staying home with his kids.  And he’s not, he’s doing a great thing.  Similarly, nobody should be mad at women who are making that choice.  We should embrace it, figure out what additional challenges it implies, and go about tackling them.  I’m a pragmatist.

SANCHEZ:  You know when I was …  I agree with everything that Jane has said by the way. And Governor, I like that title for you, but anyway.  When I first ran, when I was going door to door in my first campaign, I was going through …  I come from a very conservative area.  And a lot of the women would be home, and I would be campaigning, and I’d go through why I thought I would make a good Congressperson.  And it was interesting to hear the responses that I got from women. 

“Oh Loretta you sound like you’re so qualified and that’s so great, but I just don’t believe women should be working out of the home.”  Okay, thank you very much.  

“Oh Loretta you sound so qualified and I like you and everything.  I’m going to let my husband know when he goes to fill out my ballot.” [Laughter]  And the list went on and on. 

It was interesting to me because we polled three weeks before the election, and Bill Clinton was … This was in ’96, was on the ballot also.  Bill Clinton had an 18% gender gap positive by women voting for him.  I was on the ticket, I was the woman on the ticket, I had no gap.  In other words, women weren’t voting for me.  Then I ran, I won, Bob Dornan contested the election, made me go through hell … We re-polled in February because we thought we might have to run the election again.  

That was after the January 20^th Inauguration of Bill Clinton, where I had sewn my own ball gown for the Inauguration.  And the front page of my hometown newspaper, and the L.A. Times and everything had me sitting there sewing it, and they had me in it at the Ball and everything.  We polled a month later.  Now I had like a 30% gender gap.  Women loved me.  And when we asked them, you know, why would you vote for Loretta Sanchez?  They said well she’s just like me, she sews [Laughter].  So I guess what I’m saying is the first thing is that women have to accept women [Applause].  We have to accept all the qualities of a woman.  

We have to stop being so judgmental about each other.  We have to accept each other.  And I see that most when I go around and women meet me and they say, “Oh I’m just a housewife.” Or “Oh I just stay at home with the kids.”  I mean they feel unvalued, with no value, and I look at them and I’m thinking, you are doing one of the most important jobs in the world.  You are raising the future of our country.  Why is it that women themselves feel undervalued?  They undervalue themselves.  “Oh, I’m just a housewife.”  No, you’re not married to a house.  

“I have two kids.  I know you don’t think that’s very important Congresswoman …”  I think that’s incredibly important.  And I think we should honor that.  We should celebrate that.  But at the same time, please celebrate that if I choose not to have children, or if I choose not to be at home, that I can in fact be a good government person, that I can be a good congressperson, that I could be a governor, that I could be president in the White House.  Please.  I honor what you want to do, please honor what I want to do.  If we would be more like that, especially the women, then I think we would see a lot more women in politics and as CEOs and other things.  [Applause]

RADDATZ:  I think I’m going to open it up to questions but I wanted to say just one thing about this.  I certainly think there is …  Being home is an honorable profession as well, but I think one of the points of this article is that are women doing this because they’re not getting enough help in this realm?  And do I have to make the choice because I’m not getting enough help from my spouse or from society, that you can’t do both and because these are my children I’m going to make that choice?  I certainly honor anyone who makes the choice for whatever reason they want to do it.  

So let’s open it up to questions for Governor Swift and Congresswoman Sanchez. Anybody?  

Why don’t you just go up to the microphones?  That would probably be the best thing.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I have a question which is in direct response to what both of you were just saying a moment ago.  I am a woman who has two children, works full-time, has never taken time off.  And I feel, and I don’t know if you have any comments on this, that there’s a pressure for many women to not work fulltime with small children, and to do that.  And I think some of you have direct comments on that.  And so that pressure …  I mean you were talking about devaluing staying at home;  I think there’s also a devaluing of women who work.  And who choose to send their children to child care.  

Another thing, too, and this goes again to what the Congresswoman was saying.  I’m on a town, a city committee, and was recently asked to chair it, and I said no I can’t, I am working full-time.  I work with the Million Mom March I’m very active.  I care about that cause, and when I have free time, I like to go to my children’s soccer games.  Well when I went to the meeting where it was told that I refused the position, the reason that was given to the City Council was because I was a “soccer mom” [Laughter].  

Now, again, thinking about the credentials that you have …  In terms of when I said I couldn’t take this position, I said I’m working full-time, I’m involved in another important organization, and I have a family.  And it seems as if I was valuing what I do, but it was de-valued for me.  And so I think that those two reasons are things we haven’t talked about, and I’d just like your comments on that. 

SANCHEZ:  Well I don’t have children so it’s hard for me to even understand the …  What it all takes to get children done, if you will.  [Laughter] [Applause]  Done the right way, by the way.  The Governor will probably speak to that hopefully.

SWIFT:  And they’re never done.

RADITZ:  No.

SANCHEZ:  And that’s the scary part.  Look I come from a large family, seven kids.  Now I was the oldest daughter so I got to bring up my two younger brothers and sisters.  All the romance of bringing up children to some extent was used when I was 14 and 15.  

Again it comes down to the fact that I think people are happiest when they have choices.  When they feel like they have choices.  The thing that I see least when I see people where they really are unhappy …  They don’t tell you “I’m unhappy” but it’s …  You know, they can’t leave their job, they hate their job but they can’t leave their job.  Because they’re tied to it by the health care plan, or they’ve got kids at home, they’re trapped, whatever it is.  And this happens to men and to women, they feel trapped.  They feel like they have no choices.  They feel like they can’t change their job.  Like they can’t stay at home, like the people aren’t going to value them, like oh God people are saying bad things because the nanny is taking care of the mom’s kids.  I think we have to be just a little bit more open to letting people have those choices.  If they have those choices and they make those choices, we should try to be as positive about the choices they make.  

And I think it’s a really sad commentary when you list the three reasons why you don’t have time to do something you might actually like to do, and the only thing they come up with is well you’re a soccer mom.  I mean that tells me that society is still not valuing a working woman or somebody who’s trying to be supportive of their spouse, whether it’s a husband or a wife.  That somehow the excuse is oh she’s busy with the kids.  

So I guess I would just say I don’t know how we change society’s take on this other than to have more people speak about it.  I know when I give interviews to magazines, women’s magazines in particular, I honor and I celebrate the fact that some women stay home, can stay home.  Most of our women don’t have choices, as the Governor pointed out earlier.  There are a lot of single moms, moms left behind with kids, having to work minimum wage jobs.  Why don’t we do something about putting the planks in place for good child care [Applause].  So that our mom’s don’t feel, God, you know, I’m leaving my kids and it’s killing them …  That something might be going wrong.  And at the same time we’re thinking child care is so terrible how could this mom leave her kid with these child care providers?  I mean we have to really think as a society how we help women and men to make good choices in their lives to get their talents into the workplace or into the home place.  

RADDATZ:  I think Governor, if it’s okay with you, I’m going to go to another question, so we can get more questions in.  Go ahead.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Hi there.  My name is Beth Boland and I’m a partner in a law firm here in town.  And I wanted to go back to that issue about the message that we give about life is hard.  Because I found out something, actually last week, that astounded me.  Which is that in a couple of the offices, I’m in a national office, and a couple of our offices we have like 60% women associates.  But when you look at the partnership ranks, it’s like 20%.  Even in those offices that have a ton, and I was asking some of the women, I said, you know why is that?  How can that pipeline …

RADDATZ:  16%, it’s in this article, of partners.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  It is, it is, because there was just the ... (inaudible)

RADDATZ:  50% of the graduating class of 2003 at Yale was female.  16% are partners.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Yes, and the thing that I learned was that in talking about these women associates they said “Well they don’t want to be like us.”  I thought, wow, you know.  And that issue of life is hard, I mean I have three kids too, and I use life is hard to them when they want like the tenth dessert, you know, sort of thing.  But that message about what to suggest to those women who especially, and these are women who are really talented, who are going up, and I think to myself, especially when I heard a couple of the folks up there on the stage say life is hard and that is the message that we give, is that really the right message?  

It may be very realistic but, you know, how realistic do we want to be if we want to show people that the brass ring is really out there and they can go out and get it?

RADDATZ:  Can I just, just because I started this, I just want to say one very quick thing.  I don’t want …  It’s like when you’re told pregnancy is wonderful.  Sorry, you know it really isn’t.  And when my friends are pregnant I tell them the truth from my perspective.  

You know it’s wonderful, you can do it, it’s a fabulous experience.  But there’s parts of it that really stink.  And I think that’s what I tell young people.  That there are …  You can do anything, and that’s always a message I got in life.  And I believe it, and I believe all of us can, and I believe we can change our minds, and I believe if we’re not doing so well today we can do better next week.  But at the same time I think it’s important to give young women in particular information.  So when they go to work and it’s hard, and it’s much more difficult to come home and feed the baby and take care of a sick kid and look great at the office and do everything well, that they don’t think they’re alone.  And they don’t think they’re doing something wrong.  And they don’t think, oh, God, my mother did it.  Or my, you know, this woman, this partner at the law firm did it, why can’t I.  I think you need to be realistic with young women.  

SWIFT:  I would absolutely agree and it’s sort of the summary of my work/family speeches.  I would say there’s four things we should do.  Paid family leave for low and middle income working women [Applause] we should do …  But one of them is to still inspire our daughters but to steer them with the information that they need, so that they can deal with the difficult things.  And I don’t think we tell them it’s just hard to go to work.  Because I can tell you from the friends I have it’s hard to stay home.  There’s a lot of you know …  Having kids, and this is probably for the 15 and 16-year-old girls out there, having kids is hard.  It’s a really hard thing to do.  It’s the most wonderful thing you’ll ever do, but it’s hard, and it’s hard whatever the choice.  

And I’ll just go back to the last question.  This is an observation, not an answer, what’s really interesting is if you talk to women who are working and have children, they’ll tell you they don’t think other people value their choices.  And then I’ll talk to my friends who are staying at home, who are not working for pay, and they’ll say, “You know, people look down at me and they don’t value my choices.”  And then you’ll talk to women who are working part-time, the few who can find that wonderful middle ground that doesn’t seem to be realistic for as many people as it should, and they’ll say, “You know, I think the people who work fulltime don’t appreciate the value that I bring to the office.  And I think the moms that I see at the playground, who are staying home, don’t really consider me part of their group.”  

Now there are probably a couple other variations of that.  At a certain point, when everybody who’s trying to do it, and we all at the end of the day come up with our own answer for how to do it, and we all feel like nobody values our choices, maybe that says something about us rather than them.  [Applause]

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  It does.  But I do think we need to give a round of applause to both the Governor and the Congresswoman …  I mean for the role models that you both are, that you have reached out and grabbed the brass ring.  You have.  [Applause]

RADDATZ:  Oh now we’re getting the long line here.  Okay.  

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Hi my name is Julia Tripp and I’m a consultant with the Center For Social Policy, UMass Boston.  I’m also here as a representative of Speak Up Initiative, and there are 20 women in this audience here tonight who have been invited from across New England to participate in this conference and bring about diversity.  First of all I want to thank you for the insightful statements that you have made.  And as I listened to your comments we had developed a set of questions and one of them I’m sort of building on, so I have two questions.  One is, Representative Sanchez this is directed to you, and the other question either or both of you could answer.  You spoke of your sister’s pedigree.  And that she, I think, chose to stay home, or that might’ve been Jane Swift’s sister.  But you spoke of her pedigree, her preparation, her education, being pushed, and all the wonderful things that set her up for running for office.  But what’s a poor person’s pedigree to prepare them for running for office?  

And you talk also about it being a hard life.  I know that as a woman that has had a very hard life, and I’m a little over 25 so it’s kind of late for me to start really young, but what are the strategies you would recommend to a poor person.  What’s a poor person’s pedigree made up of?  That’s question one.

RADDATZ:  Let’s stop right there.  Let’s let her answer question one.

SANCHEZ:  Well what’s a poor person’s pedigree, that’s interesting.  If you’re still poor at …  Well first of all, and this is what I tell to anybody who’s interested in going into the political arena.  And you want to be a candidate, you want to be an office holder.  First of all, have an education.  Now regardless of how poor you are, most people can get some kind of education.  I know we make it harder every single day, and I don’t agree with some of our national and state policies for example that we’re doing to exclude more and more people out of that.  But have some sort of education.  And believe me, I didn’t go to Berkeley and Stanford and UCLA as my brothers and sisters did.  I did what I could, given all the factors of being … 

So the first is try to get an education.  The second is do something.  I don’t care if you’re the best janitor.  Do something.  Have some life experience.  Be a teacher, be a janitor, be whatever it is you’re going to be, but be the best janitor there is.  Be good at the job experience that you have.  Because then when you become a candidate you can talk about what you did, or how good you were at it, or whether you went to work on time.  I get so many young people who come out of Poli Sci classes, and I don’t want to get Poli Sci people mad or anything, but who go and do Poli Sci and then come and they say, “Now I want to be a politician.”  Well what kind of experience do you have? Go get a job.  Do something.  Even if you’re just cooking fries, you know, be number one.  

My first job was an ice cream scooper.  I was the best darn ice cream scooper there was.  People came from around to come and hear me scoop ice cream for them.  You think I’m kidding but you should’ve seen the letters, I still have them, written to my manager about, you know, “this is the best experience I have on a daily basis, is coming to see this young lady scoop ice cream for me.”  [Laughter]  Hey, if you’re old and you’ve got nothing else to do, you know, your trip down to the ice cream shop may be the highlight of your day.  Make it worth it to the person.

And then come and work on a campaign.  And you’re right, it just gets me so upset that I see a lot of young affluent kids come and work on campaigns because they can come and afford to work for nothing, versus poor kids who probably would do a good job but can’t afford to come and do it.  And so that’s one of the things I think that the parties should do is to put more money into young people actually being paid to come and work on a campaign.  [Applause]

RADDATZ:  Okay I have to keep this train rolling.  So, very briefly, with the second one.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I wanted to ask you, do you see political dynasties being driven by women?  I.e., the Sanchez’s, however you say that.

RADDATZ:  Let’s go with Governor Swift on this.

SANCHEZ:  Swift twins? 

RADDATZ:  Or the Swift twins … [Laughter]

SWIFT:  First of all, their name isn’t Swift, so that makes it harder for dynasties.  Another thing that women have accomplished is we change names so it’s harder I guess to do dynasties when your children have different names.  I believe that part of the reason that I got involved in politics was because my dad was a volunteer on campaigns, and I knew people who were involved.  And I also should say that don’t discount that men can be good role models if they bring up women.  Because it was the state senator who I worked for, and I was 24-years-old, and a staff member in his office said to me, “I’m not running and you should run for this office.”  

I decided to do it, but it was him who visualized that I could do it and I could be good at it.  And by the way they ran an ad where my opponent listed like in single space type a full page ad of all of his experience and then listed my experience as a department store clerk.  And that’s what won me the campaign, so there are times when having no experience …  There were more department store clerks voting in that district than there were lawyers [Laughter] [Applause]. 

SANCHEZ:  I would just say that there are political dynasties going on.  Nancy Pelosi, for example, her father was the mayor of Baltimore, he was also a Congress member.  Her brother was the mayor of Baltimore also.  Barbara Kennelly, who was from Connecticut, a high ranking woman in the House when I arrived there, her father was God knows who out of Connecticut, who ran the Kennedy campaign actually, or was the DNC Chair then.  Her brother was the Attorney General of Connecticut.  You know if you have the dynasties you have a lot of political power there.  You have interest, you have it from a very early age.  So it’s flowing into some of the women.

RADDATZ:  Over here.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Governor Swift you talked a little bit earlier about having to make phone calls for raising money.  I was just wondering for those low and middle income women who don’t have the family finances to help them, what are some of the other ways to get that financial …

SWIFT:  Okay, so let me be very clear.  I don’t have money.  And so the reason I had to call and ask for it is because I didn’t have the ability to write the check myself.  That is the easiest way to raise money, is to have it in your bank account. 

But you can’t …  And I will also say something that’s probably pretty provocative.  Every time well-intentioned people change the rules of how easy or hard it is to raise money, and I understand the reasons they do that and I don’t disagree with the intent, it makes it harder for people who have to raise money, who don’t have money, to compete.  

And so I think we need to have a cautionary tale that it’s the people who don’t have money who have to raise it.  The people who have money we don’t have to worry about.  Because they’re all set.  And so I would say to you that I don’t see that the system’s going to change.  I didn’t know a lot of people; I called strangers and asked them for money.  I didn’t go to Harvard.  I grew up in North Adams, it’s a blue-collar city.  My dad was you know a plumber and my mom’s a teacher in the Catholic schools.  And so we don’t have money.  And there’s this fallacy that somehow if you don’t have money that you can’t raise it.  Is it a little harder?  Sure.  But you know what it was harder for me to get into Trinity College too, because I didn’t take that expensive preparation course that some kids can take to get higher SATs.  We shouldn’t use that as an excuse not to do the things that have to be done in order to be successful.  

And so if you don’t have money, I’d tell you to make twice as many phone calls as the person who does.  [Applause]

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Hi, I just wanted to speak to that pedigree issue again, and the gal before me came at it from one way.  I wanted to approach it and broaden the scope of it a little bit.  For those of us who did not pursue our education because we decided to stay home with families, and now again think that maybe it’s our time to come out and run for a political office.  Do you see not having that pedigree as part of the glass ceiling?  

SANCHEZ:  You know, don’t take this wrong.  I’m talking about when I envision where we need to be, I envision we need to be in the White House.  [Applause]

So if I’m saying that, I’m saying that the women who will break through to be in the White House are going to have to have that.  Because you all know that they judge us twice as hard.  We work twice as hard, we get less of the fanfare, and so we need to be spotless.  Whether we like it or not, we need to be totally clean with the best that we can in order to be able to break those barriers.  Almost every woman that has gone into the House does not have the kind of pedigree that we’re talking about.  It just makes it harder.  I mean they’ve done it despite the fact.  

All I’m saying is that if we want to make great strides in national politics into the White House, into owning the chambers for example of the Congress, the easiest way for us will be to invest in our young women, to get them ready, and to move them in quickly.  That’s just a long-term strategy for reaching the top echelon.  Doesn’t mean that we can’t get into the House, it doesn’t mean that we can’t get into the Senate, it just means that the barriers are significant so it makes it harder for us to do that.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Can I just follow up on that a little bit?  That may be a long-term approach.  What would you suggest as a shorter-term approach?  So I see age differences in this audience here, and it would seem to me that it would take a grassroots women’s effort to get those women up into the White House.  So for those of us who are willing to work at the grassroots level, what strategies would you recommend for us?

SWIFT:  I think that first of all you have to be thinking in a different way about the things that you’ve done.  Many of the women I know who are at home with their children are doing extraordinary things.  They’re just not getting paid for them.  And actually that’s the more traditional route into state legislatures and into higher offices, is women who have accomplishments in their communities that they can then leverage, and relationships they can leverage, and so you just have to think about how you define those differently.  But actually your experience is much more reflective of women who are winning seats in the state legislature than mine.  And I don’t have a higher degree either.

SANCHEZ:  But you have …

RADDATZ:  We’ve got about 30 seconds.

SANCHEZ:  Have to look at Elizabeth Dole when she ran for the presidency.  Her husband wrote a check to McCain but didn’t write money to her.  I mean you know what does that tell you?  It doesn’t matter what name we carry, what pedigree.  It’s just a higher-- the White House and the Congress-- is just a higher level to get yourself into.  That doesn’t mean that we can’t make it.

RADDATZ:  It’s about 5:15.  We have about 15 minutes for questions.  So I’m guessing we have about time for three or four.  Go ahead.  

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  My name is Maggie Hassen and I ran for office for the first time last year.  Lost.  But I ran for State Senate in New Hampshire and it was a wonderful experience.  [Applause]

A couple of observations and a question, and I’ll be quick.  What I heard a lot this morning, this afternoon, is that people were talking about barriers.  They certainly are there, but they’re talking also about looking at both home life and political life and professional life the way the boys have defined it for us.  And we don’t need to do that.  I have a severely handicapped child which made me redefine motherhood very early.  I needed much more help than the average person needs at home.  It has changed the dynamic in my home, but it’s also liberated me in a lot of ways.  

And I think we have to think about doing things differently, not just harder, not just saying life is hard.  We are good at that.  I work in a law firm that allows me flex time.  I define my time.  And the reason that law firm works is not only because people thought it was the right thing to do, but because people recognize there was economic interest in getting lawyers who were talented, whether they be female or male, and didn’t want to work full-time, to work for them.  So I think one of our things, and I’d like you to comment on it from your own perspective if you could, is what is it that we can do differently, how do we define the tasks in our own way, and move forward with them?  And convince people that it is in their interests to vote for us because of our different approach, not just because we work harder or better or longer.  Thank you. [Applause]

RADDATZ:  Why don’t we do Governor Swift on this one quickly.  

SWIFT:  I would say that I don’t know any family who doesn’t find their own way to do things.  I don’t think we should feel defensive about it.  I think that we should be pragmatic.  The goal is to win.  And so you have to be aware of the atmosphere that exists within the district.  You’re going to make more of a difference if you’re there than you are if you’re not.  And so I’m not telling you to compromise your values, but I’m saying that you’re going to have a greater impact on change once you actually have success.  And so we have equal parts of pragmatism and idealism.  

RADDATZ:  And more law firms like yours I think. [Laughter]

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  My name’s Mary Ellen Daley O’Brien.  I’m just finishing my first term as a city councilor in a community called Haverhill.  It’s about 60,000 people.  I was the only woman elected in the last election out of a nine-seat City Council.  [Applause]

I’m just finishing up my campaign right now, the vote’s next week, but I had to come to this conference.  Because I work full-time as a nurse case manager, which is a very rewarding advocacy role, and I also am the mother of four daughters, 10, 12, 18, and 20.  The ten-year-old has been saying since she was five that she was going to be President of the United States [Applause], her name is Bridget O’Brien, I just want to …  [Laughter]

RADDATZ:  Okay do you have a question from Bridget?

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  But anyways what I wanted to say was really to Jane, because when you became Lieutenant Governor and then Governor, a lot of women in this state were just so proud of what you were doing.  [Applause]

And my question is in this campaign, which I did not face the last time, I’ve had name-calling.  Behind my back, but not the nicest names.  And I don’t find that the fellas do that to each other.  And I was wondering if you women have both faced this name-calling issue when you’re the only woman, or one of just a few.  I think that’s something we have to face.  This name-calling that goes on behind our backs.  And I’d be interested in your point of view on that. 

SWIFT:  I will tell you that every person who runs for political office has to put themselves on the line.  And I think the most important thing, and it’s probably similar to the advice that we give our children is that you do yourself what you believe is right.  I call it the “sleep at night” test.  So don’t fight fire with fire.  And secondly, if you can accomplish this, don’t let them know it’s getting to you.  I would take some of the political cartoons that most people would’ve found the most hurtful of me and get copies of them and frame them, and put them in my office.  Partly because, you know, don’t go into this business if you don’t have a sense of humor.  Make sure you can sleep at night, because at the end of the day whatever they say about you is going to be less important than what you feel and your family feels about you.  And that is based on what you do, not on what people say about you. 

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  What I’ve been doing is when we’re in public together I always shake his hand first.  

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Hi.  My name’s Lauren Mauriello.  I’m from Lynnfield, Mass.  I graduated actually from Mass College of Liberal Arts in North Adams just this May.  And I work at the State House.  I just started about a month ago.  I kind of more, I don’t have a question, just a comment.  Listening to all three of you …  I was a journalism major, so I can relate to you, minor in political science.  I ran for Selectman in my town when I was 21 last April, and I ran against the incumbent who … He would never tell me his age but he was old.  [Laughter]

SANCHEZ:  Now remember she’s 21, so old could be like 36.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  No he was older than 65.  And I had a lot of challenges.  Number one, I had no name recognition whatsoever in my town of Lynnfield.  It’s a town of about 12,000 very conservative people.  He had been a Selectman for four terms, he had been in the town for 30 years, his mother was in the …  It was just, he had a lot of name recognition.  I ran my race from North Adams, in my dorm, with all my sorority sisters.  We would send out “Dear Friend” cards, have my coffees, they’d send out all the invitations.  He raised $12,000, I raised $2,000.  I had black and white pushcards that I made on my computer, he had color, doublesided …

RADDATZ:  Okay, advice, advice.  

SANCHEZ:  Did you win?

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I lost, but I received 48% of the vote.  [Applause]  And it’s only inspired me more to run again this next election.  I just got appointed to the finance committee.  But what I wanted to say to you, both of you, is I was, everywhere I went newspapers followed me.  Whether I was at a baseball game, at the school …  Oh well look at her, the way she’s dressed.  My opponent had about ten suits.  I had no suits.  I had to save all my money, I had to raise money.  I went door knocking and we’d be like pretty much in the same streets, he’d be a couple houses behind, people would say to me “I don’t need anymore Girl Scout cookies.”  [Laughter]  

Like, honestly, a couple of people.  Like I just faced …  But that only inspired me more.  And that’s what I want to know from you.  Like, my parents said, “Lauren you need to know how thick your skin is.”  And I learned, and people …  I was in the newspaper, people loved me, they hated me.  I had people come up to me, “What are you crazy?”

SWIFT:  I have no experience with that. [Laughter]

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  And that’s why, and I honestly, I admire the both of you.  And Governor Swift, I mean coming from North Adams, and I rooted for you the whole way.  And I just think it’s amazing that you’re up here, and someone like me, I hope to be up there someday, I want to run for office, I’m not looking …  I’m looking for presidency.  [Applause]

And I just wanted to let you both know that as a young woman in politics, you’ve inspired me and I hope that other young girls in here feel the same.  And it can be done.

RADDATZ:  We hope we see you in Washington and not just here.  We’ll hold our breath.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  My name’s Annaleesa Wolf , and I have been definitely inspired here.  Not only tonight, but in general by both the Congresswoman and Governor.  I’ve read about you a lot, I’ve kept track of you.  But what I really want to know from you, both on a personal level and as advice, what should be my baby steps?  I really want to be in your shoes.  Where do I start?

SANCHEZ:  Education, do something before you go into politics.  Get on a campaign, learn to see if you like it, learn how to raise money.  

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  If you get a moment with Senator Kerry could you ask him if he could pay me? [Laughter]

SANCHEZ:  Okay, I’ll tell John that.  

SWIFT:  I would say there is great experience in working on a campaign.  Or working in politics.  It gives you exposure to issues, and knowing all the issues is extraordinarily important.  But at the end of the day, and I didn’t follow the Congresswoman’s advice because I worked in the State Senate and I ran for the State Senate when I was 25-years-old, and I would say run for an office not because of where you want to go but what you want to do.  

And if you find an issue that is relevant in the area that you live in, and an office that can make a difference, and you think the opposition isn’t doing it …  It’s very difficult to beat somebody if you agree with them on everything if they’re the incumbent.  So you have to pick a race where you disagree, and believe vehemently in what you stand for that’s different from the opposition.  

And then you have to be willing …  People think that political campaigns are glamorous.  I mean even when you’re not pregnant and throwing up everywhere you go, political campaigns are not glamorous.  It’s hard work.  And you know you have to be willing to stand at the factory gate at 5:30 in the morning and then go to the diners at 7 o’clock in the morning, and go to the senior center at noon, and then at 3 o’clock be back at the factory gate, and then be at the spaghetti dinner later.  And unless you run for President or Governor the first time out, those are the kind of things that win elections.  I still have frostbite in one hand from being at that factory gate at 5:30 in the morning.  But it was worth it.  

RADDATZ:  Okay now we really are running out of time.  So let’s try to be …

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  I’ll make it really, really short.  I just couldn’t leave without addressing this question.  Governor Swift you’re an incredible role model.  Thank you for all you’ve done.  [Applause]

My name is Mini Timmaraju and I’m the director for the New Hampshire Senate Democratic Caucus.  And I’m new to New England so it’s really awesome to be here.  My question is specifically however directed at Congresswoman Sanchez.  I’m a UC-Berkeley grad, so I’m a former Californian.  My question is about your experience as a woman of color.  I couldn’t leave here today without asking specifically for you to address that.  I glanced around the room and I’ve seen so many women of color, and I just wanted to ask you to share your experiences and advice specifically on that issue.  

One of the things both of you have talked about is how important it is to get campaign experience.  I didn’t get on a campaign until I was 28 years old and all my superiors on the campaign were 22 and 23-year-olds, I don’t mean to offend anyone, but white boys.  It was really hard and weird.  I had gone a more traditional route.  I’m a first generation immigrant.  My parents said go to graduate school.  So I had a law degree, I had a career.  And I said I want to be in politics.  There was no network for me.  I had to kind of create my own network.  I was just lucky and I was just really persistent.  And I’ve really …  The whole experience has just been fascinating and exciting and empowering, but to see someone like you, at your position, I just had to take the opportunity to ask you to share some of your insight on that.  Because for women of color it’s hard.

SANCHEZ:  Well we call it the double whammy.  And I have my AfricanAmerican counterparts and Asian counterparts that have been in the House with me.  You know in the Latino culture it’s also very, very difficult.  Look, the women, Hispanic women have run their families, we run the community, we do everything, but for some reason you know we’re not supposed to run for politics.  Or we’re not allowed to run for politics.  The same thing happens.

So first of all when I talked about the infrastructure.  You ran right into the 22year-old Anglo male, you know, he’s moving up the chain.  First position that comes open where he’s ready to go, they’re going to put him in and that’s it and that’s who they’re going to run.  And forget about you even though you were a volunteer and maybe you raised a million dollars for that campaign.  What you did doesn’t count.  So the answer is we have to make our own organizations, our own structures, our own machinery if they’re not going to invite us into theirs for something other than you raise the money but just stay in the background.  

Secondly, at least as a Hispanic, the most negative people towards me and my campaigns have been Hispanic males, believe it or not.  So it’s kind of a real ugly thing. I remember when I first ran the only prominent Democrat that backed me was this Anglo guy who was really big.  And the Latino boys went to him and said-- of course this was in the primary, they were backing the Anglo guy who wasn’t even from the district, and I was a female Latina that nobody knew about-- and they went to him and they said “We’re backing the white boy, stop backing Sanchez.”  And he looked at them, he said, “You always come in here and you scream and yell at me about how I never back Latino candidates, and the one time I back a Latino candidate you don’t want her.”  And they said very ugly things about me, none of which were true.  They actually wrote it in a letter.  And so the answer is you know you cannot depend on the infrastructure.  You can try to be a part of it, but if it’s not working for you, you’ve got to make your own.

RADDATZ:  Okay and I’m sorry to do this but we just have time for one more.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Thank you.  I don’t have a question but I have a comment to make.  My name is Sandra Umanum, I am a woman of color, single parent, work full-time, and I go to school.  And I probably won’t have the opportunity to run for an office.  But I believe that every woman still has power even though she doesn’t have the opportunity to run for an office.  Everybody has the power to vote.  And we should use it wisely.  [Applause]

So that’s all what I want to hold everybody that is not a …  I’m not in my 20’s anymore, probably I will never run for an office, but I’m concerned about the social issues.  I’m part of the minority, I’m Hispanic, a single mom, and I think we can make a change if we use our vote wisely.  [Applause]

RADDATZ:  Thank you.  I’m going to break the rule and let you ask your question, because we didn’t have a question there.  Just one more right there.

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  Thank you.  I am really privileged to be here today. My name is Towa Pittman, originally from West Africa, now a citizen of the United States.  I live in Quincy where there’s no one that looks like me.  If they’re there, they’re not visible.  Fortunately our mayor helped break the boundaries.  For the first time in that city we have a city solicitor who is a black woman.  And I have advocated for a lot of issues in that city, just to try to bring awareness, cultural awareness in the city, and diversity in the city.  And my point is getting through but very slowly.  

And I thought maybe if I run for office, you know, I might bring some changes.  So this year I’m running for City Council as a start. [Applause]

But just to revisit your question Congresswoman Sanchez, I really want to know how we can try …  You know, stand behind a woman candidate, to support us, and empower us?  

Because not only …  I’m not worried, because I’ve gone out with the mayor.  I’ve talked to the mayor and he said, “But c’mon, come talk to me some more.”  I gave him my background and he was pleased.  And he had this walk-a-thon in the city where he invited me to walk with him.  And I thought, well, this is a start to see what’s going to happen.  We were all nervous.

RADDATZ:  Okay I’m going to let you answer that question.

SANCHEZ:  So the question is?

AUDIENCE MEMBER:  How can we get empowerment from other women?

SANCHEZ:  Well women need to begin to realize they need to support women.  First of all women need to decide to run.  We need to encourage women to run, and then we need to support them.  What does that mean?  

We need to get money to them, we need to put them …  We make up a lot of the machinery, of the normal machinery, it’s just that we’ve been using them for the typical candidate.  We need to go over and use it for the other women.  

How do we change women’s minds?  The only way we’re going to do it is by talking to each other.  Is by going in front of each other, by pushing each other.  And the last thing that I want to say is the nice thing now, and I think the Governor will agree with this, is that we have more women in political office now who are beginning to have the ability to raise money, to use power on behalf of other women, and we are making that outreach to help women understand how to run and to encourage them to run.  We’re bringing in the women who are in business who are making good paychecks and making them understand the importance of giving.  And that’s both on the Republican and the Democratic side.  

And I don’t know about the third parties or the independents, but at least in the Congress, Nancy Pelosi for example has taught most of us how to reach out and how to bring other women along, and how to put money behind them.  How to encourage them to run.  So, you know, get …  You need to contact us.  Because we want to help women to run and be successful at it.  

RADDATZ:  Thank you everyone, thank you very much.

[Applause]

RADDATZ:  Thanks for your questions, they were much better than mine.  I’m glad we opened it up.

HARDY-FANTA:  I want to thank the audience for a wonderful participation, and for the questions you had.  I want to thank Martha Raddatz for a great panel discussion.  

[Applause]

And Governor Jane Swift and Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez, it was a real pleasure to have you open up this event for us today. 

[Applause]