• May 18, 1992
• Vol. 37
• No. 19

For Whom the Bell Tolls

By David Grogan

Male Candidates Quail as Ellen Malcolm Wields the Power of Emily's List

WHEN SHE HEARD EARLY EXIT-poll results from the Pennsylvania Democratic primary two weeks ago, Ellen Malcolm, 45, could barely contain her excitement. Marching into the Washington, D.C., hallway of EMILY's List, a political action committee that supports liberal women candidates, she rang a hand bell and shouted out the good news to her staffers: Lynn Yeakel, a political newcomer, was beating out four other Democratic candidates for the opportunity to challenge incumbent Republican Sen. Arlen Specter in November. In fact Yeakel was winning because she had made an issue of Specter's hostile interrogation of Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court nomination hearings. As Malcolm rushed to catch a train to Philadelphia, where she would join Yeakel on the victory platform, she predicted more electoral triumphs for women in the coming months. "Women candidates are becoming lightning rods for voter frustration," Malcolm says. "If I were a man, I'd be very nervous facing a woman on EMILY's List, because I'd know she had a realistic chance of winning."

In this season of political discontent, Malcolm delights in her role as a fairy godmother to feminist politicians. Though she is more likely to be seen waving a financial chart than a glittery wand, as head of EMILY's List she has helped nearly a dozen Democratic candidates break through a glass ceiling to see their dreams of holding office come true.

EMILY stands for Early Money Is Like Yeast. "it makes the dough rise," says Malcolm. Members of the fundraising network, whose numbers swelled from 3,000 to 11,000 in the wake of the Hill-Thomas confrontation, pay $100 to join and pledge to make contributions of at least $100 to two women from a list of candidates who are all pro-choice on abortion and have been screened by Malcolm and her staff. This year EMILY expects to distribute $3 million among some three dozen Democrats.

Barbara Mikulski of Maryland, one of two women in the U.S. Senate, says a $150,000 contribution from EMILY was crucial to her 1986 campaign. "We women used to be bakesale candidates," says Mikulski. "But Ellen taps into a constituency of professional women who can give more." Ann Richards, who received $400,000 from the List in her 1990 Texas gubernatorial campaign, agrees. "I would not be the Governor if it were not for EMILY's List."

As the great-granddaughter of A. Ward Ford, a partner in a business machine company that became IBM, Malcolm is worth millions herself. After graduating from Hollins College in Virginia in 1969, she worked as a volunteer for Common Cause and later as media director for the National Women's Political Caucus. In 1980 she set up a private philanthropy called the Windom Fund to direct some of her wealth to women and minorities. Her staffers helped preserve her anonymity by hanging portraits in the Fund offices of a fictitious benefactor dubbed Henrietta Windom.

Malcolm, who has never been married and shares a rambling three-bedroom house in D.C. with two dogs, created EMILY's List in 1985 with the aim of helping women win credibility by infusing "early money" into their campaigns. This year Glenda Greenwald, 54, a GOP fundraiser, created a similar network—WISH (Women in the Senate and House) List—for pro-choice Republican women candidates.

Malcolm hopes the one opponent women candidates will no longer have to overcome is defeatism. On her blazer lapel she wears a talisman she received from former San Francisco Mayor and EMILY's List beneficiary Dianne Feinstein, one of 22 women vying for U.S. Senate seats this year. The pin features several shards of glass suspended from a gold-covered bar. "It's the glass ceiling," says Malcolm. "And it's shattered."

DAVID GROGAN
LINDA KRAMER in Washington, D.C.

• Contributors:
• Linda Kramer.