State Voices

We elect and win when Republicans nominate female justices or female judge candidates. You can look up and down the ballot…we’ve had men win too, but women will always give us a bit of an advantage up and down in the courts. And…a Republican woman in a general election is a powerhouse. Now what we have to do is find the right ones and then marry them up with the resources. And I think that is really a formula for us moving forward."

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."

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 don’t want to set anything backwards or make it sound bad. But women aren’t going to solve this problem by themselves. They need all the folks who are in the establishment who are kind of the old white men, [they] have to welcome them in and bring them in and find opportunities. Because if not, it’s hard to do yourself if you’re on the outside. It’s hard to get on the inside."

I consider myself an advocate [for women’s political leadership]. I think it has made us richer as a state. It made my experience as a leader and a legislator richer, but I have repeatedly gone out of my way to stress I’m under no illusion that women legislators are a monolithic community, that just because we get women that they all are going to be of one mind and agree on certain issues. And I think it would have been inappropriate for me to expect that. But I do think that when you include people with different backgrounds than traditional, you get that rich, broad, I think, perspective. We had women that were not as supportive of…issues that are historically important to women. And I think it was important for me to give them that freedom and room to be who they were. And that was important to me as well. …I think we’re open and inviting and not intimidated [as men] by being gender-wise in the minority. I think we got a much richer…set of perspectives that helped shape policy."

I will have events of coming out of the shadows…in my city. …And I will get some text messages that say, ‘I’m so glad that you expose yourself like that so I can just go with my gun and shoot you.’ I would get messages like that to…my personal social media. …Sometimes when you get published in a newspaper or you have an interview… [you receive messages saying,] ‘Go back to your country, you illegal.’ And you start to see that people focus so much on the immigration status of a person that they forget that we’re also humans."

Because of the way the system is, I feel like oftentimes when people want to run for office, they feel like… ‘if I have a political position and I want to push for something, it’s just gonna be me against many and it’s just gonna be hard.’ Or they think ‘I [will] need to change my values or who I am as a person if I become a person in political power.’ …I know some amazing organizers, some Latina women, who say that they will run for office, but they think that they get to do more as community organizers than being in power because they feel like their ability to fight for systemic change in their community and social change in their community [is] going to be limited once they have a political position."

I think one of the supports that we need to be giving is some mental health, right? …Because that’s having to deal with people who don’t believe in you every day, who want to question you every day. That is very draining. And that’s why people who run once, they’re like, ‘I don’t think I want to run again. Too much. Somebody [else] can step it up and run.’"

So I think from my perspective, it’s less [white women] gatekeeping and, in my perspective and in the position I’m in, more of a tokenization. The white women that I take issue with are very keen to have me in a space to be like, ‘Look, I have this Indigenous leader. I have this Indigenous representation. She’s a woman. She’s native. I’m so excited.’ As soon as I’m there to bring perspective and be like, ‘Hey, this is what you’re doing wrong. This is how we should move this forward. This is what’s going to be best for our community.’ Then it gets shut down. And so I think it’s very keen to keep us in a very specific space right now. And it’s interesting because it’s continuing to uphold sort of that same power dynamic and structure they experienced."

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.]"

I have been very lucky that [with] the work that I’ve done as a lawyer, I was able to nestle away enough money to survive for not practicing law for two years. Who can quit their job for two years to run for office? I mean, that’s crazy. Like saying it out loud is just ridiculous. But, you know, but that’s how I feel about the last five years [of running for and serving in office]. I really do feel like it was my tour of duty. [Interview conducted in February 2023.]"

[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."