The time is now for women leaders
On a chilly December day, Patricia Russo sat in her car, signing what she calls “love letters,” also known as end-of-the-year appeal letters to donors. Russo is executive director of Yale’s Campaign School. As an extrovert, she’s found social distancing (Read: Not seeing her girlfriends) challenging. Extending her time in her car on a trip to the post office is one way for an extrovert to get out of the house.
Oddly, despite the country’s spiking deaths from the coronavirus and an incumbent who won’t concede he lost his bid to remain president, the Campaign School has had a record year.
After the last in-person training in February, Russo and the staff began fielding phone calls from program graduates who weren’t sure how to campaign in a pandemic. Training at the school is rigorous and it can be life-changing, but no one was prepared for what to do about knocking on doors when people aren’t opening the doors.
Candidates could take to social media, but how do you stand out on Facebook Live among all the other candidates vying for attention? Do you Google Meet? Zoom? Are those supposed to be verbs? And — this is a bigger deal than you may imagine — what do you wear to online meetings? Early in the pandemic, we took to sweats and pullovers, but is that the outfit one would expect on a congressional candidate? And what about your background for online meetings? Blank wall? Carefully-placed books? Should the family dog make an appearance?
So the school pivoted, said Russo, and created a six-month campaign training series devoted to politics in the new normal. Hundreds of would-be candidates, campaign managers and others dialed in to learn a new way to raise funds, run committees, and get elected — all from a distance.
And it was free. Anyone who wanted to learn — not just graduates of the Yale program — could partici
The excuse for not having more women leaders has long been that women haven’t been trained to lead.
pate in the online sessions. Russo made the radical decision while thinking about her mother, who died of pneumonia last year. Grace Bozza Russo, who worked in her hometown’s town clerk’s office, ran every election for as long as her daughter could remember.
She was still working at age 87, and as Russo was thinking about how to continue her own work during the pandemic, she heard her mother saying, “You are not charging for this. It’s too hard.” You should always listen to your mother. So Russo did.
“Where’s the downside?” she said. “Now I’ve got people running around telling everybody how fabulous we are. We did this as a community.”
And they get results. Every Campaign School graduate who ran for office in Connecticut this year won, and they’re stepping into leadership roles in Hartford and elsewhere, said Russo.
And that’s just Connecticut. One of the school’s previous graduates, Nikema Williams, won the Georgia Congressional seat of her mentor, Rep. John Lewis, who died in July. Now, she’s working on that state’s all-important Senate runoff. Another rock star candidate, incumbent U.S. Rep. Lauren Underwood, of Illinois, won her election after her Republican opponent prematurely claimed victory. It’s been that kind
of year for the former Women’s Campaign School. The school’s name change was meant to open the door a little wider, Russo said. Non-binary people and men? All welcome, and the name over the door needed to reflect that.
This matters. The excuse for not having more women leaders has long been that women haven’t been trained to lead. But late last month, Yes-He’s-thePresident-elect Joe Biden named an all-woman senior communication team for his new administration. (In addition, he chose a woman to head the Office of Management and Budget, and women to head Treasury and HUD, among other high-powered jobs. And let’s not forget Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.)
This past week, some bold-face-named Black women sent Biden a letter asking him to appoint more Black women to leadership positions. The letter included strong candidates to fill roles at the transportation, energy, and justice departments, among others.
So now Russo is reaching out to donors for money she knows will come, despite the deficit racked up by offering sessions for free. Having to work a little harder doesn’t worry her. The economy is melted. Women — on whom the bulk of child-rearing still falls — still don’t have sufficient and affordable child care. A lack of funds should not be an impediment to their being in politics.
“I believe the money will come,” Russo said. “It always comes. The only time it doesn't is when I get frantic. I am not frantic. I am thrilled.”