Chicago political gurus team up to help more women run for office - Chicago Tribune
A group of local political connoisseurs has teamed up to offer pro bono guidance to Illinois women considering a run for office — from local school council to U.S. Congress.
Rodham Consulting — the name is a hat tip to the group's inspiration, Hillary Rodham Clinton — was born the week after Donald Trump was elected president.
"I woke up Wednesday fearing all those women who were inspired to run for office might not follow their dreams," said founder Anne Szkatulski, a 32-year-old attorney who lives in Chicago's West Loop. "The wheels started turning, and I thought, 'We can do this.'"
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By the following Monday, Szkatulski had a website, a group of 35 volunteer advisers and a mission.
"My primary emotional reaction to the election was fear that women would decide not to get involved in politics," Szkatulski told me. "So that's the problem I decided to attack head-on. We want to make sure every Democratic woman in Illinois has someone to call when she wants to get involved in her community."
Why just Democrats?
"I, personally, and our team of advisers all have experience working with the Democratic Party," she said. "We're really only comfortable providing services through that lens."
Advisers include Tarah Cooper, former press secretary for Mayor Rahm Emanuel; Sarah Cottrell, who worked as the digital director and deputy press secretary for U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth; and Rachel O'Konis Ruttenberg, executive director at the Family Defense Center, a nonprofit that advocates for families in the child welfare system.
Women who are interested in running for office, or know someone who should run, can sign up as clients on Rodham Consulting's website, and an adviser will set up a consultation.
Szkatulski says the group has about 150 clients so far, with backgrounds ranging from stay-at-home moms to corporate executives. Most women come in knowing what office they want to occupy; others just know they want to run for something.
"That's exactly why we were founded," she said. "We have a thorough conversation and make sure we're adapting a client's path to make sure she's the most effective leader. In some cases, once we have a conversation about top priorities and policy interests, a client will realize she'll have more influence over the areas she's passionate about in a different level of government."
Emily's List, an organization that works to elevate more pro-choice, Democratic women into office, says the group has received inquiries from an unprecedented number of women since the presidential election.
VoteRunLead, a nonpartisan organization that trains women for careers in politics, told The Guardian that there's been an enormous increase in the number of applicants for its training webinars — from 30 or so for a typical webinar to more than 1,000.
"In a 48-hour period after the election, we had 1,100 women sign up for our next webinar, and we had to close it and start a waitlist," Erin Vilardi, executive director of VoteRunLead, told The Guardian. "Most women said they woke up on November 9 and realized they could no longer just spectate or click on online petitions, they wanted to know how to run for office, whether it's the school board, the city council, state or national representation."
Women make up about 24 percent of state legislatures, 17 percent of Congress, 8 percent of the 100 largest city's mayors and 12 percent of state governors, according to the American University School of Public Affair's Women and Politics Institute.
"When you look at the makeup of our government, you see that while women are the majority of voters and make up half the population, they're not equally represented in government," Erin Loos Cutraro, co-founder and CEO of She Should Run, told me in March. "We're in drastic need of greater levels of inclusion."
She Should Run also works to boost the number of women in elected office, hosting events to raise awareness about the political gender gap and helping prepare women for public leadership.
"Too often, when positions come open and people look around to encourage others to run, those words of encouragement are coming from inside, from the people who are already in elected positions," Cutraro said. "And the people already in there are predominantly men."
That's slowly changing. The new U.S. Senate will have 21 women (including Duckworth), which is more women than ever before. But men still outnumber women in Congress by 4-to-1.
Watching a woman with more than 30 years of public service lose the presidency to a man with zero made Szkatulski understandably nervous that progress would stall. But early signs indicate that women viewed the loss as inspiration to run toward politics, not away.
And it's encouraging to know the resources and guidance they'll need are waiting at the ready.
Twitter @heidistevens13
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