Anita Yandle, Halei Watkins, and Eileen Pollet are co-founders of Feminist Progress PAC, a new political action committee that will help fund young women running for political office in Washington.
Anita Yandle, Halei Watkins, and Eileen Pollet are co-founders of Feminist Progress PAC, a new political action committee that will help fund young women running for political office in Washington. HG

Any young, first-time candidate running for political office and trying to raise campaign cash will tell you the same story: To get anyone to take you seriously, you need money. But to get money, you need people to take you seriously. Without an incumbent's rolodex of donors, proving you're viable becomes a huge challenge, a challenge that's compounded if you're a young woman.

"Everyone was so excited to see me run for the 'experience,' but not to open their checkbooks," says Halei Wakins, a 28-year-old who ran for Seattle City Council last year. Watkins lost in the primary. One of her opponents raised four times the money she did; another, three times the cash.

"There's a lot of talk about electing non-traditional candidates—young women, women of color, queer and trans people," Watkins says. "And then when it actually comes time to get down to it, people get really scared and fall back on traditional wisdom."

Watkins doesn't think it has to be that way. That's why she and a crew of other young, politically active Seattle women have formed a political action committee (PAC) to raise money for the specific purpose of donating it to young women who've never run for office before.

This weekend, Watkins and her two cofounders—Eileen Pollet and Anita Yandle, both 25—will launch Feminist Progress PAC. FemPAC will donate to progressive, non-incumbent women under 40 with a particular emphasis on local and state government and women of color—a sort of hyperlocal, millennial-focused EMILY's List.

All three of the founders have experience organizing and working on campaigns. Yandle currently works at the Washington State Association for Justice and Watkins and Pollet are both with the political consulting firm WinPower Strategies and previously worked as organizers for pro-choice groups.

They started talking about the PAC after last year's Seattle City Council elections, which resulted in a women majority on the council for the first time since 1998 but saw most of the youngest candidates losing early.

"There was a lot of success for women in general," Yandle says, "but the struggles young women faced were not the same as established women in politics."

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"Everyone but young women"

Washington is among the states with the best representative of women in the state legislature, but the bar is low. Only 34 percent of lawmakers in Olympia are women.
A low bar: Washington is among the states with the best representation of women in the state legislature, but only 34 percent of lawmakers in Olympia are women. No state has 50 percent women in its state legislature. center for american women and politics

Government at all levels is dominated by white men. Today, women hold just 19 percent of seats in Congress, according to Rutgers' Center for American Women and Politics. Only 24 percent of statewide elected officials, like governor and lieutenant governor, are women, and women hold just a quarter of state legislative seats. Across all cities of more than 30,000 people, 19 percent of mayors are women. Women of color make up 6 percent of Congress, 3 percent of statewide elected offices, and 5 percent of state legislators.

Put another way: 51 percent of the population has somewhere between a fifth and a quarter of the representation in their government.

Washington's state legislature does better than many states, but is still only 34 percent women. Seattle Representative Noel Frame, 36, says she's the youngest Democrat Democratic woman in the state legislature and only one representative, Puyallup Republican Melanie Stambaugh, is younger. State Senator Pramila Jayapal, who is now running for Congress, is the only woman of color in the state Senate.

Research has shown women are less likely to run or be recruited to run for office, and even once they run and are elected, fundraising is their top barrier to running for higher office. And while women are more likely than men to vote, they make up only 30 percent of campaign donors. (That might have something to do with the fact that women still earn less than men.)

"As much as we'd like to think money doesn't mean a voice in politics," Pollet says, "we have PACs and lobbyists and money does matter. We need to make sure women's voices are being heard as donors, not just as voters and constituents."

With few women in local government, there are even fewer of them in the "pipeline" to run for higher offices like Congress. Electing women in lower offices helps build that pipeline, so that eventually all levels of government are less dominated by swinging dicks. (Other groups, like the National Women's Political Caucus of Washington, work on this too.)

FemPAC has yet to officially choose its candidates (that will happen with the help of a larger advisory group), but is likely to support three Democratic legislative candidates running this year: Michelle Chatterton in Puyallup's District 25, Kristine Reeves in Federal Way's District 30, and Sharlaine LaClair Lynden's District 42. (Two of the three candidates have received consulting from WinPower, where two FemPAC founders work, but the efforts are separate.)

The group hopes to raise $10,000 by the November election in order to donate to several candidates this year and then get an earlier start next year so they can be involved in races at the beginning of the cycle, helping candidates address the viability problem.

"The system that has been in place has favored everyone but young women and particularly everyone but young women of color," says Heather Weiner, a political consultant at Moxie Media. "To have an actual organized effort to say, at the very least, 'we see you; we encourage you to run' is invaluable."

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"The boys' club is really on its way out"

Anita Yandle, Halei Watkins, and Eileen Pollet are co-founders of Feminist Progress PAC.
Halei Watkins, center, says she faced sexist and ageist questions on the campaign trail for Seattle City Council last year. courtesy of halei watkins

Watkins, Pollet, and Yandle, who filed the paperwork for the PAC, are white, but say underepresentation of women of color in government is a priority. They plan to endorse women of color who are running and recruit women of color to their organization's board.

Brianna Thomas, a 34-year-old minimum wage organizer who ran for Seattle City Council in West Seattle last year, says she faced the same fundraising challenges Watkins described. Thomas and Watkins both say that while running for city council, they were met with questions about whether they were old enough to run for office, whether they were married, and if they had kids.

Thomas says she's excited about the potential of FemPAC, but hopes the group focuses on "finding women of color in communities of color to represent those communities. I would hate to see it turn into just another level of the same system."

But if candidates like Thomas and Watkins had trouble raising money themselves, won't they face the same challenge fundraising for a PAC? FemPAC organizers say they're hoping to first solicit small-dollar donations from young people who may not feel comfortable taking their $25 checks to other, deeper-pocketed political insider events. Then, they'll look to well-off political insiders to pass on some of their own success. (Thomas agrees. "I'd like to see rich men help," she says.)

If they're successful, FemPAC could help build a pipeline of women to run for offices across Washington state in the coming decades. And that could change both the representation women see in local and state government and the policies politicians are paying attention to, hopefully placing a sharper focus on issues like abortion rights and paid family leave.

"I think candidates sometimes get afraid to talk about those issues," Pollet says, and Watkins jumps in: "Yeah, well, when all of your donors are old dudes. Like, they want talk about the arena. I want to be able to talk about women taking time off of work to have a family."

"The boys' club is really on its way out," Watkins adds, "And young women are poised to take that place."

Donate to FemPAC on their website or at their kickoff on Saturday.