letter to ellen malcolm

dear ellen:

yes, i have made my new year's resolution to help widen the pool of good women running for congress and state legislatures, especially for OPEN
SEATS! as you may know, howard dean has embraced the "Every OPEN SEAT A Women's Seat" strategy and hopefully more political leaders will also join in on making sure women are recruited and supported for OPEN SEATS till we catch up. of course, we must also continue to work and organize on every other front to get more women elected.

i personally will continue to give directly to womens' campaigns, as i
continue to feel that this is most effective. however, i am ever open to
learning more about the depth of the work by emily's list to get more women
into the mix. i was disappointed that your list of "recommended candidates"
included only about 18 women for federal office in 2004. we cannot get more elected by supporting fewer and following the democratic party's deselection process based on $$$ raised before a candidate can be embraced -- this only contributes to our ending up with tiny incremental change each cycle and our ranking of #61 in the world for electing women to congress/parliament.

so I really hope that your organization in its 20th year will return more
to its roots of "early money is like yeast" -- and in your recruitment
especially reach out to those women who ran for Congress in 2004 without
primetime help, but who worked so hard to promote our progressive values in states like montana, ohio and florida. many did remarkable well even if they did not win this time. i also really hope that you will abandon the strategy of "electing democrats" and focus only on many more women's campaigns.

in the meantime, i wish you the very best in 2005 as we work together to
elect more women and achieve gender balance in congress. 50/50 by 2020 -- i
think we can do it if we all pull together with that goal in mind!

best always,
paula xanthopoulou
www.withoutboundaries.com