State Voices

I don’t even know what the term is but…I think it is important to really notate…there are some white women that are helpful and that do understand and do get it, but there’s a whole slew of white women who don’t, right? And I think [they] are oftentimes a lot more hurtful than actually helpful."

I do believe that when women get [into political office], they want to bring other women along. …I think that it just kind of builds on itself."

After we passed a rather large communications bill, [I remember] looking back at all the lobbyists up in the audience area overlooking the senate floor and there was not one woman. They were all men in suits. Literally not one woman. And I actually remember standing up and turning to them and going, ‘What, not one woman?’ I think we also have to be intentional about that, too. …When [corporate lobbyists] would come in I would ask, ‘So how many women do you have? What’s your ratio look like?’ Because I wanted them to know that that was important to me. So I think that that’s something that we can do also…making sure that we’re asking those questions and making it clear that we have expectations there."

[As a Black woman in Georgia’s political ecosystem], I think [members of that ecosystem] ‘othered’ me and they ridiculed me, and so I made myself undeniable and impossible to ignore. And now I’m accepted, tolerated, and in some instances celebrated. [Interview conducted in July 2022 before Ufot left the New Georgia Project.]"

I love being able to lead an organization with a diverse group of Black women in terms of our experience where we find ourselves on the ideological spectrum, nationality, sexuality, like all of the identities, and all of the intersections show up in our work. And it makes me feel like the solutions that we are developing and the campaigns that we are winning are designed to win for the broadest section of society possible because of how bold and how committed we are to our gender work and our class work. So if you design a solution that works for poor people, it works for women and fems and it works for people of color. It will benefit the broadest section of society. Period. And there [is] a team of professionals who are committed to thinking through that everyday. [Interview conducted in July 2022 before Ufot left the New Georgia Project.]"

Absolutely not. [There is not a support infrastructure for Black women in Georgia politics.] …And it’s really unfortunate. And because of the relative success and the relative visibility of Black women candidates and women of color, I think it reinforces the idea that they don’t need it, that we don’t need it. I’ve been spending a lot of time – and…this is a take that sounds hotter than it actually is – but I don’t believe in Black girl magic, right? And I believe that…in a lot of instances it’s harmful, right? Because what it is is Black girl sacrifice, Black girl labor, Black girl insomnia, right? Like an extraordinary amount of labor goes into holding one’s life together in order to lead in this particular way."

In our issue and community organizing work [at the New Georgia Project] we are often coming across activists and organizers, healthcare professionals, people who are amazing, often people of color, often women, and queer folks, often people who are poor. And we are often encouraging them to run for office as a part of our overall plan to win. And so a lot of our influence as it relates to the candidate recruitment pipeline comes from the fact that we have hired, trained, and deployed something close to like 5,000 canvassers and organizers in our decade. And so – and it’s an entirely new generation of operatives who have some experience running big things and winning things in the South with Black people specifically, right? And so, you know those were things that were missing from the candidate pipeline conversations. Those were things that were missing from what leadership looked like in our state legislatures across the South, even in places where there are significant majorities of people of color. …And [we’ve cultivated] not only candidates but [also] campaign managers [and] legislative aides because oftentimes we send these activists to state legislatures…and then their staff is completely unprepared to meet the needs of their constituencies. So then we lose by not being able to govern. And so our work has also bred an entirely new generation of effective, strategic, campaign staffers for other people and political campaigns. [Interview conducted in July 2022 before Ufot left the New Georgia Project.]"

[County party organizations and women’s auxiliaries] use the women but they don’t promote the women. And that’s always been one of my pet peeves. They want them in the grassroots because they know that women are eager beavers and will do anything to please other people. And they’ll work hard, but they won’t say, ‘Well, why don’t you run for the state Senate?’"

One gap that I’ve always kind of – and this goes for women but I think everybody – is a support system around transitioning off of staff life and going into whatever is next. Even something as simple as – and I actually see a lot of women especially struggle with this as they’re looking for their next job – is being able to sell yourself. And you know what we do as legislative staff is really hard to explain to someone who hasn’t been there. And so just how do you take these skills and talk about them in a way that someone else who does not have that experience can understand? …Especially in the last couple years…we’ve had really talented, smart, experienced young women looking to leave [who] struggle to find the right fit [for] the next step. I don’t know what that kind of support looks like. Maybe it’s a network of former staff who’ve been there and learned on their own. But even creating…a resume with some of the experience that we have is hard to translate on paper. So how do you do that when you’re out there in the real world competing with all these other people? How do you translate that? I’ve seen a lot of younger women struggle with that."

I still think the level of misogyny is enormous and underrated by men. I mean, I don’t think they see it and it’s everything from just what you get in terms of the reaction to anything you post on social media, just the personal comments – the physical comments, the amount of negative reaction, the comments on your stupidity, that kind of thing. I don’t think men have to deal with that. …So I think we still have a huge problem there. I do think the number of women we have serving [in political office] is helping because people are seeing more that this is normal. We’re making it more normal and I think young women have increasingly less patience for the bullshit."

I’m going to say the financial barriers [are the barriers that remain to women’s representation]. …I was fortunate that I’d worked for a large law firm and developed contacts around the county, but I worked as pro bono counsel for a large law firm so my contacts tended to be people in the legal services and nonprofit world. So when you have a system that is based on you rolodexing…and calling up everyone you know and asking for, I think at the time it was $2,800…Between the wage gap which leads to the wealth gap, women have less disposable income and are less likely to be able to just whip out the checkbook and do that. So I think that’s a huge barrier and I was committed to [ending] Citizens United and campaign finance reform before I went into this, but having to deal with the insane money race and the expectations around it and wanting to have a life and be able to talk to friends afterwards – we really need to move on [from] that as soon as humanly possible in order to have a more diverse candidate pool both from the female and from people of color and everything else."

The AAPI sector as a whole is wielding more political power in 2022 because when you see the growth of our AAPI community [in Nevada], it’s just exploded. We’re now at 10, 11% [of the state population], and…we’re 20% in certain districts. …You have a…very fast growing AAPI community. And I see, personally, more and more Asian women in politics and running for office, which really makes my heart happy."