| Chapter 2: | The Second Wave and Emily's List |
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key role in the creation of the liberal women's movement, as they fostered a sense of collective experience. The meeting in Malcolm's basement and the pseudo Tupperware parties that followed relied on this memory/tradition of grassroots activity.
The second component of ELIST's founding is funds. Malcolm had the money necessary to cover the organization's start-up costs because of her status as the heiress to the IBM fortune.1 The form of the organization, a political action committee (PAC), was also familiar. After the passage of the Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) in 1971, the number of PACs exploded well beyond the confines of labor and business, which had dominated the political money game up until that point. Since 1971, in fact, two women's PACs had formed: the National Women's Political Caucus (NWPC) and the Women's Campaign Fund (WCF).
The goal of this chapter is twofold. First, I place EMILY's List in the larger political world of electoral politics and campaign finance. Why did Malcolm create a PAC when there were other women's PACs? What unique tools did PACs offer? Second, I provide a basic history of the organization, focusing on how EMILY's List came into being and its early structure, taking special note of how its structure differed from other women's PACs at the time.
Why a PAC?
Political action committees (PACs) came into existence in the early 1900s and were most often associated with labor or business interests (Souraf 1994; Sabato 1984). Some scholars (Schattschneider 1975) noted their existence with concern, citing James Madison's warnings regarding the divisiveness of factions or discussing them in reference to corruption or graft. But for the most part, the strength of the political parties limited PAC influence. By the mid-sixties,