Rethinking Political Power

[Power is] the ability to check off items on your political agenda.”

You have to be in the room where the decisions are made.”

We’re always fighting to have that voice at the table, and some are more successful than others. [Interview conducted in May 2022.]”

I believe political power lies in the voices that people listen to.”

Power is having something that someone else wants and that you have the ability to either give or hold back. …In the political realm it’s usually resources, its voting blocs, its networks, access to other resources, or other votes.”

[Money] translates to access and, you know, not saying, oh, this is going to change the way that that person votes, but I could get in the room to tell them. And if you can’t even get your voice heard or your issue heard then there’s no influence.”

I believe that if you have the power to get stakeholders together of all walks of life and collaborate to start getting in touch with your decision-makers…[this is] the most meaningful, the most effective, and the most powerful, [more] than even having the sort of office I held before.”

I think in navigating the political space, I felt really strongly about bringing my whole self into the arena. …I like wearing red lipstick and hoop earrings, I just do. It’s who I am. And it was really important to me that I [did] not lose those symbols of who I am in the space. I wasn’t going to not talk in Spanish with my grandmother when I caught her [on the phone] and I was walking through the senate building. That’s just who I am and [I’m] modeling that for other women who may be interested in being in office. I hope it gave some sort of space for folks to feel like they didn’t have to change who they were to be in the public arena.”

I think being in elective office definitely gives you a position of influence, policy influence…clearly you have a vote.”

Being in a minority party makes it harder…but I always say you have the bully pulpit, you have the podium. You can always use your words. And it matters. So whether you are in a minority or majority, words do matter. You have the ability to convene the media. You have the ability to go out and speak to groups of people.”

You need the decision-makers to include women without a doubt. That is the whole keg. It’s not just to be in the body. It’s not to be freshmen. It’s to be in leadership.”

When the budget negotiation happens, it’s the governor and the legislative leaders that are negotiating it. So there’s a lot of power resting in what we’d normally refer to as the five parties — the governor and then the legislative leaders in the House and Senate from both parties.”

I will say I do think the most important [thing] is electing more women into office at all levels because the influence that I wield now I don’t have if I’m not a former elected official. So the only way to have more former elected officials that can speak their mind and hold positions and have that influence on the outside is to have the women on the inside. …It’s very much one comes before the other. …So I really do think the priority continues to be to increase [women’s] elected representation at all levels.”

I think that our municipal and county positions are huge centers of actual change that happens and policy and implementation, where the boots meet the ground. And I think there’s a lot of potential and capacity for a lot of positive change to occur at those levels.”

The biggest source of power that I see is with the Clark County Commission quite frankly. I think they have even more power and certainly more money than the state. And they fund almost everything that we’re talking about and then some. …They’re able to lobby and direct the way in which legislative efforts are made at the state level…because they fund so many things. They have an enormous amount of influence and power.”

Aldermen have a giant microphone, a giant platform of legitimacy where if you go out and you say something needs to happen, a lot of people are listening to you whether you can make that decision or not. …What you say changes the dialogue which then changes the culture.”

If we want a Latina congresswoman from Georgia, a lot of the preparation of being in the public space comes at the local levels.”

The political power center right now is actually our court because [on] almost every major piece of policy, somebody sues us and we end up defending it in court. [Interview conducted in March 2023.]”

The reality is the people behind the scenes, the staff who are doing the work – the staff who are making the decisions as to where the money goes [and] who gets the contract – those are the people that have more influence.”

It’s not that all the power lies with lobbyists. But I think that their influence has increased because you see a whole lot of folks coming in because of term limits. You see these large freshman classes in our legislative bodies and they are always looking for information, they are looking for guidance. They are looking to really hit the ground running because they know that they have a limited time in the body. And so I think that lobbyists who have been around for decades are a natural place for them to go and to lean on. And when you make those friendships, those relationships, you’re of course more likely to let that person have influence on your policymaking decisions.”

I thoroughly understand now the power of the executive branch. And it is powerful. And so to have this appointment I feel so privileged and honored and humbled because there is a lot that I get to do. …We are doing all of those things to have the experience of implementation of budgets, programs, and the legislation be what it was intended to be, right? …And inside of that there’s a lot of discretion…and depending on who you are, what your values are, it can go one way or it can go the other.”

We have three or four serious consultants that get every Republican elected and you have to use one of them. …This is not a state where you can run for an office like that and win without one of them. And the Democrat Party I’m sure has the same.”

We need to see more women in the campaign arena as well, not just as the ones running for office but as those helping and leading the ones running for office.”

Well, you have the same power players behind the legislators. And I know that’s been one concern and complaint that a lot of people have had is that they wish we had a bigger pool of consultants to choose from when it comes time to run and to have representation because there’s been a monopoly, really. So you know, as much as I hate to say it, those are the people who kind of pull the strings.”

Money speaks. While hard work is clearly important, contributing financially to candidates can provide greater access and opportunity to have a “seat at the table.” It is potentially a more direct route to influencing policy decisions.”

The contract lobbyists…wield an extraordinary amount of power through their access to money because they make the recommendations to their clients [on] how much to give and to whom. So the absence of women in that space might make a difference.”

I do think that a lot of the power right now lays in the grassroots, the union organizations like United Working Families, for example, organizations like Mijente, those organizations that have been doing the organizing work for a very, very long time. …They have the power because they have the hands; they have the people that can go knock on doors.”

Really, what you’re seeing is power is flowing to donors. …Less of a county [party] organization, less of a state [party] organization, and more of those sorts of organizations [where] you’ve got big donors and then you’ve got the campaign committees on each side.”

[Political insiders] are pointing to grassroots power [as where power lies now] because the [Illinois] Democratic machine has been crumbling, right? [Former Speaker] Madigan has been indicted [and he] was the…embodiment of power in the Democratic Party, the person that would give away the money to the rest of the candidates. Big Mell, you know, the Mells were super important in Illinois Democratic politics. They’re out. So in the absence of that machine, [which] was a very oiled machine that depended on all of these families that were given jobs and then knock on doors – a lot of those people live in the suburbs now, what’s left? Grassroots is what is left. And so you had us all – all of our IPOs [independent political organizations] were going to knock doors for Delia [Ramirez] for Congress and Delia won in a landslide.”

Power is people.”

I look at how Black and brown and marginalized voters have begun to lean into their power and to fight back. …Whether that is through direct action, whether that is through advocacy…through voting.”

At least in Democratic politics, Harry Reid has had a hold on the state for quite some time and will likely do so even through his death.”

[Being a former staffer] definitely gave me an understanding of who the players were and how to interact with them…it frankly makes me a much better legislator. I fully understand the connection between constituent service and policymaking. …Working in a staff role demystifies the thing that we all do to ourselves as women which is, ‘Oh, I’m not ready.’ When you realize just how much of a mess half the people there are, it makes it a little easier to feel like you can do it.”

And particularly it’s the women – myself, Morgan Cephas, Rep. Mary Isaacson – we were all former staffers to other elected officials. It’s a great training ground to prepare for running for office if that’s what you want. But it’s also a great space to make some significant influence or have significant influence over the decisions that are made because you inform all those decisions.”

[Campaign professionals] then run for office because they know how to activate the levers of power, or they know how to run a campaign; they know how to take advantage of an opportunity.”

So I think on a positive side, we have access to the table now. But again…we’re not being allowed to be in a position where we’re making the decisions for election cycles or the policy agenda and stuff like that. And we’re still being second guessed. [Interview conducted in May 2022.]”

I think some of the effects [of women’s representation] that I see have been muted by the fact that leadership is still male, both the House speaker and the Senate president have continued to be men. And I think that if there were women in those roles, I think the impact would be greater. [Interview conducted in March 2022.]”

You didn’t see that change [in the legislative conversation] happen immediately [when we had a female majority]. I think you saw it happen going into the next session when those people were now in leadership roles – from being…male-dominated chairs of committees to female-dominated chairs of committees – and that changed the conversation.”

I believe [power is held in] elected positions because that’s where you can affect change. And right now, with [Democrats] being in such a superminority, you can yell all you want but it doesn’t affect the vote on the floor, and the vote on the floor is what makes it into a law. [Interview conducted in November 2021.]”

When [institutions] have been male-dominated for so long that the culture becomes that as well. …I see [my newly-elected male colleagues] quickly make friends all the way up to the speaker of the House and other folks because they are a part of that old boys’ network and I’m like, ‘You just got here. You just got here and everybody knows your name. But there’s only nine of us [Black women members] and they can’t get our names right,’ so that’s been a thing for me. [Interview conducted in April 2022.]”

You know, sometimes we celebrate getting there because it’s so important to be there, right? But when you get there and when you’re in that space it can really cause you to shrink if you don’t have the development that you need. You can shrink. … And that is what oppression seeks to do. It seeks to wear you down.”

We got a lot of attention here in Nevada for having a majority-women legislature and I think that we need to go a little bit deeper there as well because…it’s not that influential to have a bunch of women in power if they are going to align themselves with patriarchy, and they are going to align themselves with status quo, and they are going to align themselves with mass incarceration and all of the things that are consistently impacting our community. So I don’t necessarily consider that power. What I consider to be a power is having people who are in alignment with the community and positioned with power.”

There are value sets in politics…that are promoted particularly with the guys…[of] loyalty and staying in line and pulling for the team. …I think that the idea of having women in that space becomes a question mark, right, in the sense of, ‘Is she going to be overly emotional and [is she] going to be uncontrollable?’”

[Backing women candidates] was about consolidating power. [Former Speaker Madigan] saw opportunity in the suburbs and took advantage of it, but [he] was certainly not there to empower them. In fact, it was very much the opposite of that. He saw them as more easily controlled.”

So many times what I’ve seen is, well this person was an advocate and a champion and their community loved them and they did so many great things as a community organizer or whatnot. And they get to the Capitol and they’re just D.O.A. because none of that stuff is going to work inside the building. And then those people who were getting at least part of what they needed from outside the building don’t have that voice there anymore. They have somebody who’s very stifled and upset and frustrated inside the building and I don’t know how much good that really does.”