Equality is a Doable Thing
What our Founding Mothers Knew
By now, many of you will have heard the news that Close the Gap California’s visionary Founder Mary Hughes is stepping away from her day-to-day role with our campaign in 2021.
If you know Mary, you know there is no force in nature that could stop her from advancing women wherever she goes. She will never be far from our effort to speed up the pace of progress in California and will continue supporting Close the Gap. In fact, I’ve even secured her commitment to a key speaking slot at next year’s Sacramento Symposium for 2022 prospective candidates. If we play our cards right, she might even stick around for the whole shebang.
Throughout her career thus far and since she launched CTGCA in 2013 along with a small group of Founding Mothers, Mary has been the source of direction and inspiration for countless prospective candidates, donors, and volunteers. Mary often directs and inspires where no one else could, or would, and we are all better for that. California itself is better for that. We are each privileged to have had the opportunity to do this worthy work alongside her formidable intellect, her uncanny ability to inject levity into any setting that could benefit from it, and her purposeful focus.
Over the years, Mary has been the driving force behind CTGCA’s core functions, from recruiting, to fundraising, to shaping the message of our campaign. Most recently, she has focused her efforts on CTGCA’s recruiting work, functioning simultaneously as Lead Recruiter for Southern California and as our Senior Political Advisor statewide.
Mary’s shoes are impossible to fill by any one person- her tremendous knowledge, honed over decades of groundbreaking accomplishment, her ability to motivate and inspire, to visualize and realize success, are not something we can replicate in one package.
What I want to tell you about is what we can do, and why Mary is stepping away from her day-to-day role with CTGCA happy, healthy, and optimistic about our odds of success.
Mary’s transition coincides with a significant moment of opportunity and expansion for CTGCA: the Motherlode, and the tripling of our core workload in the form of winnable districts ripe for us to target for progressive women between now and 2028.
Our founding mothers knew in 2013 that if we could optimize our recruiting model by 2021, enough winnable seats would open over the next four election cycles to bring women to 50% of our state leadership.
The reality is, the unprecedented volume of the Motherlode means CTGCA has reached the point in time when our campaign is ready to further its growth and transformation dramatically, regardless of the day-to-day presence of our Founder.
The volume of work is about to become such that no one person — no matter how epically talented or devoted — could give each promising potential Recruit in each Motherlode district the time that she deserves. It’s time for our campaign to have more than one person in the roles of Senior Advisor and Lead Recruiter for SoCal, and that’s just the beginning. I’ll be sharing more in the weeks and months to come about our plan to get the job done, and I thank all of you who have already invested in our growth.
A Knowable Thing
I want to share a favorite expression of Mary’s, and there are a lot (I invite you to share your favorite here).
Maybe you’ve heard her say this — about a research topic, to a question about political succession, about scheduling — when someone is baffled, by way of directing them to what’s relevant, she’ll respond: “this is a knowable thing.”
It’s a simple one, as her insights go, but (as her insights often go) — that simplicity is its genius.
Data-driven, responsible, insightful, true. Mary calls us to those aims. To what is obvious once you step back and focus on the whole picture. Facts. Remember those? Here’s what I mean.
Women’s best opportunity in a generation is a knowable thing.
CTGCA’s founding mothers understood the advent of term limits in 2012 meant that open seats (women’s most immediate paths to election) would now come at predictable intervals. Taking the essential ingredients in CTGCA’s “special sauce” (progressive women and starting early), we could now anticipate women’s best opportunities, if we started early enough and came willing to do the work — crunch the numbers, make the calls, ask the hard questions, tell a woman not only that she can do it, but how she can do it. We could not only increase the number of talented women running, but also take those we convince to run and position them to win. We could be an advance team for equality.
To empower & include is a knowable thing.
Those of you who have worked with Mary know that what comes after pointing out the knowable thing is often a roadmap. As Mary often offers, we’ll bring resources and history and helpers. The knowledge we need to get the job done is available to all who care and all who are willing to work towards our collective goal, no matter their age, background or preparation in politics. Everyone who cares has something to contribute. This is a community we are building, not just a campaign. Women helping women, lifting as we climb, to empower and include.
Our strategy to win is a knowable thing.
This is the most important knowable thing, especially for our recruiting team. The core of CTGCA’s winning strategy is our recruitment model — the district targeting and the intensive three-part exploration process we undertake with prospective candidates. This strategy is a knowable thing. Teachable. Scalable. A little-known fact is that some of the most successful CTGCA Recruiters — those who recruited multiple women Assemblymembers and Senators who serve today — have arrived to our team with very little experience in politics. Their results can be replicated by a team of people who care and are willing to put in the work. As we grow, things won’t stay identical to how they’ve been in the past — growth means change. But those who care and commit to this work will inform the way it adapts in order to succeed, all the way to 50% women.
A legacy of determination, generosity, & hospitality
To me, “it’s a knowable thing” epitomizes the spirit of profound determination, generosity, and hospitality that Mary has fostered in CTGCA, and in me as a developing leader, when I’m at my best. This is exactly the spirit that makes movements out of moments, communities out of campaigns.
I am NOT promising you that we have found or will find Mary’s equal. That’s not a doable thing. I AM promising that Mary has given us the tools and the opportunity to make history. Equality in California is a doable thing.
It is the model and it is the “we” that works.
What’s more — we have surrounding us a state full of women and their allies who care, who bring varied sets of talent, networks, time and treasure to the endeavor- this is why we can get it done. Everyone who cares brings something to the table. We just have to keep adding to our ranks until we make up at least half the seats at the table.
If we can continue to grow and transform CTGCA, bringing along a new generation to help get it done, I know we will make good on the promise of Mary’s strategic vision for equality in California, by 2028.
Join us!
Close the Gap California is committed to building on progressive women’s historic momentum by recruiting them statewide and achieving equality in California by 2028. Join us!
About Close the Gap California
Close the Gap California (CTGCA) is a statewide campaign launched in 2013 to close the gender gap in the California Legislature by 2028. By recruiting accomplished, progressive women in targeted districts and preparing them to launch competitive campaigns, CTGCA is changing the face of the Legislature one cycle at a time.
One in every four women in the Legislature is a CTGCA Recruit. Our Recruits are committed to reproductive justice, quality public education, and combatting poverty, and nine of 10 serving today are women of color.
