May 14th, 2003

The Hill

By Peter Brand

http://www.thehill.com/news/051403/schakowsky.aspx

Ask Democratic Rep. Jan Schakowsky where she got her start in the public arena, and she’ll tell you it all started in 1969 in a grocery store in the Chicago suburbs.

Schakowsky — then a mother of two young children — and five other women wanted to know the true freshness dates of their food. Back then there were no expiration dates posted on food products, just mysterious bar codes that the public couldn’t understand.

“We didn’t know anything,” Schakowsky, 58, recalled during a recent interview. “We didn’t know public relations, we didn’t know about organizing.”

So they formed National Consumers United.

“A very modest name for six people,” Schakowsky joked.

After questioning stock clerks and store managers about the clandestine symbols, they cracked the code. The group published and sold 25, 000 “code books” out of their basements, and freshness dates were born.

The campaign gained Schakowsky and her group both publicity — they were featured on NBC’s “Huntley-Brinkley Report” — and scorn: One food company president accused them of being communists.

“That experience with our little group of women was so incredibly empowering that it changed my life,” Schakowsky said. “And my view of myself was changed from being an ordinary housewife to an ordinary housewife that could really make a difference.”

Since coming to Congress in 1999, Schakowsky has become a fundraising powerhouse; she also serves as a chief deputy whip and sits on the exclusive Energy and Commerce Committee. During the 2002 election cycle, she raised approximately $1 million for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee (DCCC).

“From a fundraising perspective, she’s just been fantastic,” said Rep. Bob Matsui (Calif.), head of the campaign committee. 

Rep. Martin Frost (Texas), who chaired the DCCC from 1994 to 1998, agreed. “She’s been very helpful to the DCCC, from the beginning.”

In the prior election cycle, Schakowsky also headed the DCCC’s Women LEAD committee, which raked in approximately $25 million for women candidates. And she’ll stay on as head of the committee, at the request of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) and Matsui.

The new campaign finance laws, which ban so-called soft money in federal campaigns, will make fundraising harder.

“We can no longer go to just the very wealthy contributors and ask them,” Schakowsky said. “We’re going to have to rely on smaller donors. And I think the Women LEAD program is perfect for that.”

Schakowsky said she plans to focus more on engaging minority women’s groups — Latina, African-American and Asian-American — in her second term heading Women LEAD.

“We’re going to be pitching heavily that we want them to help us recruit candidates,” she said.

Not all of the women candidates Schakowsky has recruited have won, however. She was a strong supporter of Lauren Beth Gash (D), who lost narrowly to Rep. Mark Kirk (R-Ill.) in 2000.

Still, Schakowsky is optimistic about the party’s chances next year. House Democratic women raised $225,000 for Women LEAD at their party’s leadership retreat in February. Schakowsky, who won with a comfortable 70 percent of the vote last fall, said her trick for fundraising is simple: hustle.

During the congressional primary in 1998, when she was up against two other Democrats, Schakowsky cold-called almost every woman law partner in Chicago, giving them a simple pitch line that the state’s House delegation needed at least one woman. At the time, Schakowsky was a member of the state assembly.

“Twenty-five hours a week I would sit on the phone,” she said. “It’s not like I’m well connected. There’s no rocket science here — it’s just about doing it.”

Schakowsky has benefited greatly from her longstanding support of Pelosi, whom she backed in the 2001 whip’s race and in last fall’s leadership race. Pelosi returned the favor by insisting that Schakowsky keep her Women LEAD position this year.

“I made it clear: whatever her aspirations were going to be, I wanted to be there to help,” Schakowsky recalled.

Yet Schakowsky, who describes herself as a progressive, also has tried to bridge the party’s liberal-centrist divide by developing relationships with more conservative Democrats.

“She’s a very able member,” said Frost, who briefly ran against Pelosi for leader last November. “She’ll certainly have an opportunity to do a lot of things here.”

And Schakowsky has reached out to Republicans, too. She struck up a friendship with Rep. Dan Burton (R-Ind.) when he headed the Government Reform Committee.

The two lawmakers found that they both favored more open government and were committed to children’s issues. The relationship “surprised” a number of Schakowsky’s supporters, she said, because of Burton’s aggressive investigations of the Clinton administration.

“My colleagues, in general, many of them are pretty rigid,” Burton said. “I think [Schakowsky] is someone that realizes you have to work together.”

Now that she’s made it to Energy and Commerce, Schakowsky plans to focus heavily on her favorite issue: healthcare.

Matsui said Schakowsky’s combination of fundraising prowess and political nature is likely to soon make her “one of the national policy makers. She’s defining herself very well.”

Of course, her job would be much easier if Democrats were in charge and could set the agenda, she said. “Most often our victories are measured in having maintained the status quo.”

But besides working to return Democrats to the majority, Schakowsky has found another way to cope. “I have to tell you, on those days … I like to hang out in the dairy section of my grocery store and just watch people go up to the milk and look for the date.”