| Chapter 1: | An Introduction to Emily's List |
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savvy individuals running the show. That is certainly the case in EMILY’S List, but here is where the similarities end. Whereas other organizations have started as a small group and then spread outward to the grassroots, creating a nonprofit membership organization and/or a nonprofit foundation with an affiliated PAC, EMILY’S List has taken a different path. It has retained its status as a PAC and broadened its membership while functioning as a PAC, an interest group, a party adjunct, and a campaign organization. Studying EMILY's List and its origins, structure, strategy, and success, provides a new, more modern understanding of organized interests in American politics and women's quest for power. Evidence provided in the chapters that follow will quiet the voices that characterize the organization as simply a women's PAC or a plaything of a few elite women. Rather, EMILY's List is a vibrant, dynamic, broad-based organization with agile leadership and an identity-driven vision that is changing the face of American politics.
The focus of this book is the transformation of the organization from its birthplace in Ellen Malcolm's basement in 1985 to its entrée into presidential politics twenty-four years later. As with any examination of a group or phenomenon that still exists, this book will necessarily leave some wanting more, as some will say that there is no way to understand EMILY's List until after the 2010 election cycle. But there is always another election on the horizon. Given the organization's importance and the relatively scarce systematic examination it has received from academia, this book is much needed. This is not meant to stand as the last word on EMILY's List but rather as the start of a larger conversation about organizational change and the election of women in American politics.