Kaufman Campaign Consultants

Gale Kaufman, the Dems’ “consigliore”

By Anthony York

California Journal, December 2004

The political stock of those who advise candidates for public office ebbs and flows with the latest political tide. One cycle may prove disastrous for a particular consultant. But redemption can be just an Election Day away.

Gale Kaufman has been on both ends of the consultant teeter-totter this year. It began with the defeat of Prop. 56, which would have allowed the Legislature to pass a budget with a 55 percent majority instead of two-thirds. Weeks after that loss, Kaufman’s top client, the California Teachers Association, and Rob Reiner abandoned a multi-million-dollar effort to rewrite Prop. 13 to pay for new preschool programs.

But this spring, Kaufman’s fortunes changed, and arguably no consultant has had a better second half of 2004 than the longtime Democratic consigliore. She is now one of the top political advisors to Assem. Speaker Fabian Nunez (D-Los Angeles), who is positioned to become one of the most powerful speakers in California in the post-term limits era.

Kaufman also helped bring home two candidates in competitive Central Valley races – guiding the re-election of Assm. Nicole Parra (D-Hanford) and electing Fresno County Supe. Juan Arambula to succeed Assm. Sarah Reyes (D-Fresno).

But more than those two individual victories, Kaufman served as coordinator for Assembly Democrats, who faced massive efforts to target Democratic incumbents and open Democratic seats. It was an effort joined not only by Assembly Republicans, but by a collection of business interests and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. In all the seats targeted by Republicans, Democrats held off the challenges.

While the governor enjoyed great success in passing and defeating ballot measures, Assembly Democrats ensured the governor lost every single race in which he endorsed a candidate in a district previously held by a Democrat. As a result of their success, Assembly Democrats appear to have emerged from this election emboldened to challenge the popular governor.

When Kaufman agreed to help the coordinated Democratic Assembly campaigns this year, it was a return to familiar turf. Kaufman started out as an employee in the Speaker’s Office of Majority Services (SOMS), working under now-consultant Ritchie Ross while Willie Brown was speaker. In 1987, after Democrats suffered big losses in the Assembly, Kaufman ventured out to start her own firm, Kaufman Campaign Consultants. Five years later, after the birth of her son, Kaufman was back working for Willie Brown, this time as the director of SOMS, departing again with Brown left to run for mayor of San Francisco.

Since leaving SOMS a second time, Kaufman has been involved in every election, primarily as a consultant to individual Democratic candidates. She had a close relationship with Spkr. Antonio Villaraigosa, but was less active in overall caucus decisions under Robert Hertzberg and Herb Wesson.

Since the mid-1990s, her consulting work has focused on initiative campaigns. Kaufman has run campaigns for two of the largest political donors - the California Teachers Association and the Service Employees International Union.

In 1998, CTA and SEIU joined forces to fight Prop. 226, which would have limited labor unions’ ability to raise money for political campaigns. Kaufman led the effort that defeated the measure, which was backed by Gov. Pete Wilson. Kaufman also spent some time on the national stage, serving as Bill Bradley’s campaign consultant during his 2000 primary challenge against Al Gore.

Though consultants’ power has increased since the 1990s, their numbers haven’t. It is still a relatively select crew of professional political operatives who take on most new candidates for office. With term limits, consultants are looked to for the institutional knowledge and political know-how that many Sacramento newcomers lack, making advisors like Kaufman all the more important, and powerful.

Kaufman says she’s surprised the consulting fraternity has remained so exclusive, and so dominated by men. “I thought by know there’d be a lot more of us, especially with term limits,” she says. “But I think candidates are afraid to try somebody new, somebody that the lobbyists haven’t heard of. It’s a shame, because there’s plenty of work to go around.”