‘Emerge’ With Kamala

Unless you are an active politically progressive woman, you most likely have not heard of Emerge America or its local (actually, it’s founding group) Emerge California.

But you should know about them, in part because they – along with Willie Brown – helped Kamala Harris get her start in politics.

From a toadying article in the once-respectable, if always lefty, Mother Jones:  

To win, Harris had to pull together her own support system—a network of accomplished and well-connected friends who were passionate, and practical, about helping women get elected. One of those early boosters was Andrea Dew Steele, a Hillary Clinton ally and former Capitol Hill staffer who had recently moved to San Francisco. Her dismay at how few women held local office in the early 2000s led her to co-found a training program for women candidates called Emerge California, and a few years later, a national version, Emerge America.

And they remain very committed to Kamala as she gets ever closer to the ultimate political brass ring:

“Even before ‘the switch,’ as I like to call it, we were all in for Biden-Harris. But the energy since then has been incredible in activating women,” Emerge chief A’Shanti Gholar recently told “The Cut,” which is some sort of off-shoot of the New Yorker magazine. 

Fun fact:  Gholar deals with stress by getting “IV therapy, acupuncture, massages,” and having “regular appointments with my therapist to check in and let out any tension or stress that I’m holding. We should all be focusing more on our mental health.”

(Question – Why do these people all sound the same?)

One note – when asked directly, the press human at Emerge refused to provide a specific quote extolling Harris and, in the week or so I’ve been looking at the group, certain pro-Kamala statements from the website have disappeared.

It should also be noted that Emerge is a political group and not a traditional tax-exempt “non-profit,” so it is allowed to play politics.

Emerge now has more than 1,200 “alumnae” in various federal, state, and local elected positions across the country, with more than 200 here in California.  You can check here to see if your community has an Emerger, as it were.

So what does Emerge do? It trains and guides and assists and creates networks for progressive women who want to enter politics.

Only women, only progressives, and only (of course) “self-identified Democrats.”

As Emerge says on its website, it “(e)exclusively grooms self-identified Democratic women to run for office and connects program members to networks of local Democratic politicians, leaders, and activists.”

The group – which now has a national annual budget north of $5 million dollars, plus millions in its multiple state-level offshoots and is funded by the usual progressive suspects like Quinn Delaney – is dedicated to creating the “New American Majority.”  White guys need not apply:

“Emerge’s trainings are for self-identified women, 18 years old and older, who are Democrats, engaged in their communities and interested in running for office.”

There’s that “self-identified” thing again.

The group started in 2003 to help get Kamala elected San Francisco’s District Attorney. Since then, it went national and – as noted – has helped thousands of people (those who self-identify as people, one assumes) elected to office.

Across the country, it has hundreds of alums in office, including two who you may recall:  Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and Maine’s Secretary of State Shenna Bellows. They were the only two secretaries of state to attempt to remove Donald Trump from their state’s presidential ballots earlier this year.

Democracy in action, indeed.

The group’s latest annual report available does not at all delve into finances, but does speak proudly of how Emerge flipped the Virginia legislature, that 74% of the people they backed in the last election cycle won, and – if the legislative aspect of governance wasn’t enough – 104 “alums” are now sitting judges.

In California, the list of Emerge “trainees” runs the gamut from Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, the egregious state Controller Malia Cohen  all the way to local water district members and every type of elected official in between.

Seven state legislators, including Mia Bonta, are Emergers, as is San Francisco Mayor London Breed.

Suffice to say, when one looks at the list of Emergers in office in California, it is not exactly a murderer’s row of competence and sanity.

Emerge California is run – for the time being, she’s “interim executive director” – by former Oakland Mayor Libby Schaff. And now Oakland is a utopian wonderland…and she may still be playing dodgy moneyball politics, with allegations that she “is accused of secretly running a political action committee that illegally raised large sums of money to influence an election.

Oh, and she’s running for state Treasurer in 2026.

But Huntington Beach may be the best (or worst) example of what happens when Emerge gets its hooks into a community.

In 2018, Kim Carr was elected to the city council, solidifying a very lefty council majority for a not actually very lefty city.  She ran for State Senate in 2022 and lost, but is currently the “senior district representative” for state senator and woke poster child Catherine Blakespear.

Critics say, ironically, that it was Emerger Carr (and the rest of the liberal council) who pushed city residents to vote out the liberal majority in 2022 by refusing to enforce homeless ordinances, appointing a relatively random (but woke) human to the council when Tito Ortiz (was forced to?) quit flying the “pride” flag, targeting the internationally-known air show, and many other woke-ist moves.

The city voted out the liberal majority and is poised this fall to toss out what remains of the old leftist city council guard, which includes Natalie Moser.

Heads up – she’s an Emerge alum, too.