Excerpt: “Getting Elected Is the Easy Part”

“Although an overt threat is never clearly articulated, the potential for serious political consequences makes it all the more trepidatious to consider crossing the aisle on a big bill where every vote is counted and closely watched.”

Editor’s note: The following chapter on working across the aisle is an excerpt taken from Washington state senator Karen Keiser’s book Getting Elected is the Easy Part: Working and Winning in the State Legislature, which was published in July.

“It is not only important but mentally invigorating to discuss political matters with people whose opinions differ radically from one’s own.” —Eleanor Roosevelt

When I first got to the legislature in 1995, most moderate Republican women were still pro-choice. There was no formal women’s caucus, but we did gather occasionally, Democrats and Republicans alike, to share drinks and stories and strategies.

The women who had been in the legislature before or shortly after the 1992 Year of the Woman called themselves the MOB—which stood for Mean Old Bitches. They were tough, strong, amazing women. Ida Ballasiotes, Maryann Mitchell, and Shirley Winsley were some of the Republican members who were part of the pro-choice MOB, along with amazingly able Democratic lawmakers like Helen Sommers, Ruth Fisher, Mary Margaret Haugen, and Valoria Loveland. In the parlance of the day, they proudly considered themselves “tough old broads.”

That was then, and I confess I am rather nostalgic about those times and those women. The ground has shifted since, and it is dogma now for Republican women to be strictly anti-abortion and anti-choice.