The group, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this weekend with a Sunday brunch at the Hilton in Washington (go to victoryfund.org for details), helped Harris win a four-year term on Seattle City Council.
Harris, who’ll be in town this weekend to speak at the brunch, remembers that her involvement with the then-new fund in 1991, started innocuously.
On a mailing list sent to Fund supporters, Harris says her status as a black lesbian helped her stand out.
Two gay political activists — Vic Basile and (Portland's own) Terry Bean — had noticed that a group called Emily’s List had, since 1985, done wonders at helping female candidates campaign competitively against better-funded male opponents by establishing a network of donors who agreed to contribute at least $100 to two or more List-endorsed candidates. Basile and Bean wondered if the model could be adapted to help more gays and lesbians get into office. After researching the idea, they came to feel such an entity was desperately needed.
“I believe it helps change people’s opinions about members of our community and lets everybody else know there isn’t a special agenda, they have the same agenda,” says Chuck Wolfe, Victory Fund president. “They’re there working on what their constituents need. Their transportation needs, from fixing potholes to building a new highway connector. They’re there doing what everybody else is doing and the idea that they’re there and simply changing the fabric of leadership in their community has a huge advantage for us. It pays dividends in so many ways but more importantly, it lets everybody see that there’s no reason to be exclusionary in hiring practices, in the business sense. It has ramifications across sectors.”
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