State Voices

When Madigan was Speaker and was recruiting candidates he was very savvy about finding [women], in particular suburban women candidates, to recruit and promote. …Madigan accidentally brought some good strong women onboard, but definitely accidentally. "

[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."

[Being a legislative staffer] certainly was a helpful thing to me. It wasn’t the ultimate end all be all, but it definitely gave me an understanding of who the players were and how to interact with them. But I also think it frankly makes me a much better legislator. Like I fully understand the connection between constituent service and policymaking and I think that’s something that you don’t necessarily pick up naturally if you come in from another industry. …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 in [the legislature] are it makes it a little easier to feel like you can do it."

[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."

It was about [Madigan] at the end. … Because I’ll give you an example. I was the Democratic nominee for [state] treasurer, right? The Democratic Party of Illinois didn’t help me one bit. I’m Black and I’m a woman [and they] did not help me one bit and I lost because of lack of money, so, yeah."

Not only did I become the first Latina lieutenant governor in the state of Illinois, but I became the first Latina lieutenant governor nationwide. There was already a male but there was never a female, and so it was a big responsibility."

I’ve realized that this is something that’s going on nationwide, that if you want to be governor that often comes hand-in-hand with enormous wealth. I’m not enormously wealthy. …I never considered being governor because I just didn’t feel like I could come up with the dollars that were necessary. Not that I couldn’t do [the job of being governor], alright. You put me in the seat [and] I’ll work hard. I could do it. But I just don’t think that I could accumulate that sort of wealth."

I find that in the Republican Party they are trying harder to get a mix because…we lost a lot of Republican women. They were turned off by our party so the idea is now to make a push for getting more women to run for office because of that and because we need to get to those people that are undecided or turned off by the party. So I feel that there’s a big push here now. But we are certainly more open and willing to bring in more women now because we need to bring back these women that were so turned off [by] our party."

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."

It’s so interesting being the first Asian American woman [in the Oklahoma legislature]. …If you are not someone who does not look like everybody else in the room, you really cannot understand. …And it’s not like I walk in [and] I’m like, ‘Oh I’m so lonely.’ It’s just you look around and you’re like, ‘No one looks like me. And no one has to deal with what I deal with, you know."

I try my very best to bring [my racial identity] up in a way that I also don’t exclude people because unfortunately some of my colleagues – specifically the ones on the other side of the aisle who are white straight men – are like, ‘Why do we always have to talk about this kind of stuff?’ And you have no idea the barriers, just in my mind, I have to overcome before I step into this [state Capitol] building."

I think a lot of the gains [in women’s representation] have to do with, one, the teacher walkout that happened in 2018. The truth is just the fact that there are more women in education, specifically public education. And so I think when women, especially teachers who are very organized and plan their lives out and they are taking care of children all day every day, they are educating our future, once they came into the building and they saw, ‘Okay, what’s he doing? I can do that. I can do it better.’ And I think that direct contact helped a lot in these recent years where we had quite a few gains…for women running for office."