State Voices

With the recruitment coalition this year we provided hotel stays for people who had to travel far to come up [to the capital] to qualify [as a candidate]. We have a qualifying fees fund. We did gas cards and, in all of the events that I do, I provide childcare onsite. So we’re doing a lot of things to help with breaking barriers for women. …We are constantly thinking about and looking at the different ways that we can break barriers. [Interview conducted in April 2022.]"

If you see our brand, if you see how we’ve developed our brand and developed it stylistically – the color choices, …who’s face we’re putting [on the things we do] – we have women that look like [Supreme Court Justice] Ketanji Brown Jackson. …We are very intentional about what the people look like on our website, on our materials, and all of that."

We partnered with Rev Up, who is an organization that represents people with disabilities. [We] have partnerships with Asian American Advocacy Fund, partnerships with the NAACP. …We have brought in different instructional designers…[to] look at the curricula to make sure that it is accessible at all levels and not making broad assumptions about…our cohort members."

Here in Georgia there has always been a spirit of coalition work."

While I think the party gets it and truly understands that they need to be doing more in the space of candidate recruitment, I also think that it’s a culture shift for them. …It’s a culture issue because the party has been so engaged in coronations — king- and queen-making. …So the party is beginning to move into [more diverse and coordinated recruitment] because they are seeing how successful this relationship with Contest Every Race has been with doing this cold candidate recruitment. I mean we drug them along now, but they have been very, very excited because look, before we can even finish the work, they’re doing a press release about it."

I remember initially being in [the legislative chamber and] someone…pointing out one of my other colleagues who is very passionate in her speech and spoke with that kind of passion and at times raised her voice on the House floor. And a colleague told me, ‘Hey, don’t do that. We like you but we don’t like her because she speaks loudly.’ And what does that mean? Right, so I can’t speak up? I can’t speak loudly or [if I] look like [a] ‘loud, angry Black women’ then I’m unapproachable because I’m speaking from some kind of passion, and so I’m not allowed to do that, right? So I got to be polite and quiet and approachable. And that kind of respectability politics — we got to get beyond [that] and [allow] the loud woman to feel comfortable enough to speak up and speak out…without having the fear of being type-casted as one thing or another. …We need to figure out ways to allow women to not just be in office but to actually exercise that power when they’re there and to [be] respected."

I think that’s the one experience that may be different from [my] other colleagues is this burden of being seen as representative of all these voices that are not being heard, but also knowing that you don’t speak for all —like the experiences of Black folks, and Black women, and women, or all these other faces that I represent. …It’s just so challenging to balance that…to say, ‘Hey, we are missing [the] voices of Black women. We’re missing voices of brown and Black communities…and here [are] some of those issues, but it’s not all of those issues, right? …I have that privilege and burden, right? The privilege of being in that space to be able to be a voice but the burden and fear of not representing all the voices."

Over and over, we see who controls the campaign dollars and who gives the campaign dollars is often men. I talk a lot about how in my household before I got elected – maybe even still a little bit now – my husband made all of the decisions about who we gave to politically and I made all the charitable decisions, right? And…so if I left that to him then does that mean he’s choosing mostly men? I mean I don’t think so. We kind of share some of those values, but in some households it may mean that, right?"

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.]"

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."

I think there [are] a lot of women who are…mentors and either have run for office and won or lost, current [and] former elected officials. It’s a small state where people are willing to sit down, have coffee with you, give advice. And that may seem trivial or not important but I think that that sharing of experience and information is incredibly important and there is a legacy of women mentoring women in Nevada. And I know that because I feel part of that and grateful to the women who are there."

You know, we have a lot of firsts in Nevada and I think the reason, one of the reasons why is that there is an understanding and a recognition that the individuals who are running for elected office are going to and need to represent the districts that they are running in. And because Nevada is an incredibly diverse state. [It has the] fastest growing AAPI population in the country. I think 28% of the state is Latino. There is a robust African American population. Two percent of the state, I think, is Native American. I mean it’s a diverse state. And so I think you also just need to have elected officials who are representing their districts and know their district…[and can] communicate with our constituents. …So I think that there’s a recognition there that that’s important."