The Women's Campaign Fund (WCF) is the nation's oldest non-partisan political action committee (PAC) dedicated to supporting progressive women candidates for local, state and national office. Founded in 1974, it specializes in early contributions -- donations to a campaign in its first stages that are often crucial to a candidate's survival and ability to solicit more contributions. Since its founding, WCF has assisted more than 1,300 candidates for public office -- Democrats, Republicans and Independents.PACs, such as the Women's Campaign Fund, are regulated by the Federal Election Commission. Individual and corporate contributions are limited to $1,000 per candidate per election. PACs can contribute up to $5,000 per candidate per election, and can contribute to an unlimited number of candidates. In addition to support for women running for office, PACs like the WCF also provide education -- a vital contribution to the future success of women's political leadership. Thousands of PACs, mostly based in Washington, now work to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for candidates.
Marjorie Margolies-Mezvinsky has been president of WCF since March 1, 1996. She is also president of the Women's Campaign Research Fund (WCRF), a nonprofit organization focusing on education and training of women elected officials. Margolies-Mezvinsky, a former Democratic representative from Pennsylvania, was elected to the 103rd Congress in the historic "Year of the Woman" -- when women doubled their numbers. (She served from 1993 to 1995.) This increase resulted from a confluence of factors including a large number of vacant seats following congressional redistricting, and high levels of voter discontent with incumbents and government in general. In the next congressional election, a Republican landslide swept a number of Democratic women, such as Margolies-Mezvinsky, out of office. In 1995, she served as director of the U.S. Delegation to the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing.
In May 1997, Margolies-Mezvinsky reflected on the state of U.S. women and the political process.
Question: How would you characterize the status of the women's movement today?
Answer: I think there are a lot of very exciting things on the horizon. And yet I think there are some enormous frustrations that I'm not sure we'll be able to get over as quickly as I would like. I think we're moving very slowly; I think it's very frustrating for women.
We have to keep our eye on the year 2002. I think we've reached a flat line with regard to congressional representation until 2002, when there will be another redistricting following the census. Perhaps there will be more vacant congressional seats, such as in 1992. In '92, of the 24 women who won, 20 were elected to vacant seats. In 1996, of the 27 women we backed, only six ran to fill vacant seats and only seven won. You can see how important the open-seat part of the equation is.
The Women's Campaign Fund is working all the way down to the school board level to make sure that women are in the equation. Groups like ours are out there trying to make sure that women are represented. And so I think that there's hope.
I just think we need more women at the table, and that means women at all the tables -- more women who are making decisions in the boardrooms with regard to broadcasting, more women at the financial tables, more women at the judicial tables, more women at the legislative tables. More women are running [for elected office]; I think more qualified women are running. But folks still have a tough time giving money. I think we're changing, but it's just very challenging. And if you look at the candidates who win, it's usually the ones who have the most money or the most compelling story.
And when there are more women out there internationally, things happen quite differently.
Q: What's your opinion of the President's Interagency Council on Women? [The Council was founded in August 1995, prior to the U.N. Fourth World Conference on Women. The Council is charged with coordinating the implementation of the action platform adopted at Beijing, and developing related initiatives to further women's progress.]
A: I think it's a good follow-up to Beijing. It's a good way of following some tough issues.
Q: Where does the WCF get its funding?
A: We have some corporate funding, but it's mostly from private contributions.
Q: How do you differ, for example, from the League of Women Voters?
A: They're not a PAC -- that's the primary difference. We're a PAC; we give money to candidates. The League has panels and events where you come in, listen and learn. The League is apolitical. But we have an issue, which is choice. [Choice, or the pro-choice movement, seeks to keep abortion legal in the United States -- as it has been since the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. Opposing choice is the right-to-life or "pro-life" movement, which seeks to overturn Roe v. Wade.]
Q: Is choice your main issue?
A: Yes, but it's a window on a lot of other issues. If you look at the pro-choice women who are in Congress, they will likely be in support of an expansion in education, for some kind of creative health care. Many, although not most, are for gun control, tobacco control, those kinds of things. So if you look at women who are pro-choice, you also get a snapshot on some other issues. But we don't ask them about those issues at all. Our issue is choice.
In our WCRF training programs, we do not [have an issue]. WCRF trains women to run for office, and we have no issue there. We train because we have a non-profit arm.
Q: What are some other issues that are generally supported by pro-choice women?
A: It's very clear that we come together easily on gun control, although not all of us do. Day care is something that we care about. Day care is an enormous issue for women. Health care is something that we care a lot about.
Q: Health care for everybody -- not just for women?
A: Right -- improving the kind and quality of health care for everyone is important. These are things that women have to deal with more often than men. I think the Family and Medical Leave Act never would have passed had we not been there. It had been seven years in the making, and it passed. I think that the Brady bill [which tightens the requirements for handgun ownership] wouldn't have passed if we had not been there. There are lots of things like that.
Q: Is Congress paying sufficient attention to women's issues?
A: I feel that Congress can't possibly pay enough attention, so the answer would be no. But I think we're getting better, and I think we're moving in the right direction.
Q: How does the WCRF choose the women for its training programs?
A: They're invited or recommended by other prominent elected women officials. Most of the training is paid for by us. They have to pay a small registration fee, and that's all. We have three regional trainings a year. In off-election years, we also have something called Leadership 2000, where the women get together and talk about movement, and about women running for office, what some of the pitfalls are. And the people who talk are top in their field -- they want to let the women know how they can run, and why it's going to be so challenging.
Q: Is this training held exclusively to prepare women to run for political office?
A: It's really for public service in general, but most of the participants are women who want to run.
Q: What kind of training is useful for running for Congress?
A: I think life experience is really important, and I think that's what a lot of us bring here. But we've got to learn to talk to the media. We've got to learn how to raise funds. We've got to learn how to craft a message -- not just the message for this month or next month -- but for the rest of our lives.
We've got to know how to pick a staff. We've got to know, once you get [to Congress], how to run around Capitol Hill and through the halls -- those are the kinds of things that we all have to learn.
We've got to figure out how to make it work, which is really a challenge. I was on a radio talk show, and state representative Jean Cryor from Maryland called. She said, "What made the most difference to me when I was running was that my friends would come over and just cook a meal." That means a huge amount: Having people there to fill in the holes and having your day work a little better. And if we can help other women do that when they're running. (Women sometimes are not very nice to other women.)
Q: You don't think we're past that?
A: Sometimes I think we are, and sometimes I think we're not. We haven't been brought up in the team spirit enough, and I think we've got to move on and say, "Okay, we're going to vote for qualified women, and until we get critical mass, we're going to vote for them and we're going to support them." But I think there are many women out there still, who feel that a woman's place is in the home. We've got to move up from that, and I think it's got to start with women. We've got to leave some of the jealousies behind -- the "Why does she have more than I do?" -- type of thing -- and move on and understand the richness of having a sister there.
Q: Why are there so many more Democratic women in Congress than Republican women?
A: I think the Democratic party is a [more receptive] place for women. It's harder for a pro-choice woman to win in a Republican primary than it is for a pro-choice woman to win in a Democratic primary.
We had wonderful Republican women candidates out there who are pro-choice. They didn't win their primaries. Carolyn McCarthy is a perfect example. [McCarthy, whose husband was killed in a random shooting in 1993, was elected to Congress in 1996. She had campaigned strongly for gun control and defeated Republican incumbent Dan Frisa, who opposed gun control.] She had been a lifelong Republican. She didn't even attempt to enter the Republican primary. She became a Democrat. As an organization, we would prefer that she be a Republican, because we know that we can't cede this issue to any party.
I feel strongly about the two-party system, but also about the need for good women who are pro-choice to stay as Republicans.
We're much richer if we have people on both sides of the aisle [in both parties]. If you talk to any woman who has tried to get a piece of legislation passed, she will tell you that she needed her female colleagues on the other side of the aisle to get it through. She will tell you that the bonds are very strong.
Q: What can we expect for women candidates in 1997?
A: Nineteen-ninety-seven is an "off"-election year, which means that there are no federal elections except in special circumstances, but there are plenty of exciting state and local races taking place this fall. Gov. Christie Todd Whitman (Republican -- New Jersey), a pro-choice stalwart and one of only two women governors in the country, is up for re-election this fall. If she wins, Gov. Whitman will be only the third woman incumbent governor and the first Republican woman ever elected to a second term. New Jersey and Virginia possess two of the lowest percentages of women in their state legislatures, and WCF will be working hard this year not only to help re-elect incumbent women, but to elect more women to these legislative bodies.
We are also looking forward to 1997 as the year we elect women mayors of major cities across the country. In New York City, Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger (Democrat) is running a strong campaign in her bid to defeat incumbent Mayor Rudy Giuliani. And while races are still developing in many cities across the country, we currently have women running for mayor in Houston and San Antonio, Texas, and St. Paul, Minnesota.
Q: Do you see any viable presidential or vice presidential candidates coming up?
A: I think we have more people in the pipeline. We have more people than we've ever had. We have nine women senators. I think in the next 10 years we'll see a woman vice president, and I think in our lifetime we'll see a woman president.
Q: Can you make any predictions? Are there any people who are viable candidates?
A: I think we have a lot of richness out there. We have Nita Lowey (Democrat -- New York), who is just wonderful; a terrific leader. We have a lot of folks out there who are just blossoming. I think Barbara Kennelly (Democrat -- Connecticut) is terrific. Rosa DeLauro (Democrat -- Connecticut) is a great leader.
There's a real richness out there that we can count on.
U.S. Society & Values
USIA Electronic Journal, Vol. 2, No. 2, June 1997