Production was well underway on this season of “Race Unwrapped” when America experienced what A’shanti Gholar calls “The Switch.” President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, and a history-making presidential run by Vice President Kamala Harris began.
Gholar is the president of Emerge, a national organization dedicated to recruiting, training, and empowering Democratic women to run for office. And as it turns out, Harris herself is a main character in Emerge’s origin story.
On a special bonus episode of “Race Unwrapped,” Gholar joins host Michelle Tyrene Johnson to unwrap the challenges and rewards of being a Black woman running for office.
Here are parts of their conversation, edited for clarity.
Could you tell me a little bit about what Emerge is, and what its purpose is?
Yes! So, a fun fact, Emerge actually came out of Vice President Harris's very first race for district attorney in the Bay Area. Our cofounders were good friends with her, and they were helping her with her campaign, and they realized that there wasn't a good place for women to go to get the tools, the resources, the skills to run for office, but most importantly, that network of support.
So that is why Emerge was created. We wanted to see more women like the vice president in office. And almost 20 years later, we have grown to train over 6,000 women to run for office through our signature programs and boot camps, and we currently have over 1,200 of those women serving in elected office up and down the ballot across the country. And we demystify what it takes to run for office and give those women the ongoing network of support to win, get re-elected, but also to run for higher office.
So you must be feeling particularly invested and connected to Vice President Harris's run?
Yes, it is so exciting right now. I mean, we were excited in 2020 when President Biden tapped her to be vice president, but for us, it's also not surprising for us to be here. We always knew that she would be a presidential candidate, so it's great to see her at the top of the ticket.
I see on your website that you do candidate training. In fact, it sounds like it's the foundation of what you do with Emerge. What is it about preparing women for running for a race that's different than preparing men?
Women, we will wake up and we’ll say, “Do I have the right education? Oh, I don't know about my family. You know, there [is] some stuff that may come up. Do I have the right job? Am I even prepared?” We immediately start to question ourselves, when men will just wake up and do it.
So what we do is, it first starts with letting women know, you already have what it takes to run for office. Whenever I have the opportunity to speak at any of our training programs, I just tell the women, think about all the things that you did today before you came here. You took care of yourself. You probably took care of other people, you organized some things, you managed things. That is what you do in elected office, you already have it.
What we do is we give you that breakdown, the tools, the information, just so you can be an effective candidate and a great elected official. So that includes, where do you even go to file to run for office? Do you just have to sign paperwork, or do you have to collect signatures? How do you hire this campaign staff people talk about?
Writing a campaign plan, fundraising, public speaking, canvassing, phone banking, debates: that's what we go through in our training program, and the women do it in an environment with other like-minded women who are there to support them and not compete against them.
All season long, my interviews have focused on issues of voting that, in essence, are voter suppression. Because, as I always say, you can't talk about race and voting without talking about voter suppression. What role does that play in how you prepare women, or do you even take that into consideration?
It's something that we absolutely have to think about. Just when our women are on the ballot, thinking about our states such as Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania, we have our alums who will say, “Well, I have to wait to file because I don't know what district I'm going to be in.” That is real. And you know, gerrymandering is just another form of voter suppression.