In a short article and information graphic, Ms. Foundation Board Member
René Redwood is shown among Hillary Clinton, Arianna Huffington, Nancy Pelosi, and Heidi Hartmann as part of the "The Network" of political influence in Washington.
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by Virginia Sole-Smith
September 2008
Do All Roads Lead To Sarah Brewer? If you're a female power player in DC, a helluva lot of them do; the American University lecturer you probably never heard of has formidable ties to Hillary Clinton, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Nancy Pelosi, and scores of other slightly less boldface but still very influential Washington women politicos. In our survey of influence and power in the capital, we discovered that Brewer is a hub of ideas and policy, as is, not surprisingly, Clinton.
The junior senator from New York's 40-odd years in politics earn her the Most Connected Award (not always happily; the battle scars of the primary season have left her with more frenemies than any other woman charted). Coming in only a hair behind Clinton is Arianna Huffington, whose combined Huffington Post-helming, partygoing and -throwing, and incomprehensible levels of energy (she's on the board of the Renaissance Weekends and headlines the annual "Take Back America" conference; she publishes a daily online newspaper; she ran for California governor against Arnold Schwarzenegger; she writes books) make her the doyenne of DC West. She, along with Pelosi, the San Franciscan Speaker of the House, even rated viciously funny impersonations by the comedienne Tracey Ullman. In fact, California girls are doing much political moving and shaking. Huffington's pal, the Los Angeles-based environmentalist Laurie David-whom Maureen Dowd, anticipating a fun fight, mischievously introduced to Karl Rove at the 2007 White House Correspondents' Dinner-advised Clinton and Barack Obama on global warming. California First Lady Maria Shriver famously broke with her husband and some Kennedy cousins in HRC's camp to back Obama. Maybe the new administration should think about setting up a bureau out in L.A., where the fun and money are!
Whichever administration enters Washington in January, it will be doing business with the women on this power grid-dominated by Democrats but not to exclusion. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, Republican congresswoman from Washington, earned endorsements from Jessica Grounds' and Sarah Brewer's Women Under Forty Political Action Committee (and got a congratulatory call from Pelosi when her baby was born). Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican senator from Texas, has ties to Anne Wexler, the most powerful female lobbyist in DC, who gave Clinton her first political job, on George McGovern's campaign. (And according to Wonkette, Hutchison "treats Hillary like she's just one of the girls.")
You will notice that while Claire McCaskill and Clinton are in this network, it's not for their vice presidential potential. John McCain famously described the duties of that job as "to inquire daily as to the health of the president and...to attend the funerals of third-world dictators." Dick Cheney aside, that doesn't sound too powerfUl, does it? Nor did we include women whose influence derives from being married to it. The women in this weblegislators and pollsters, journalists and academics, policy wonks and talk show hosts (if the medium is the message, Oprah Winfrey remains the goto girl for any ambitious politician)-all work for their Washington muscle. And if you really want to know who's got juice in DC, watch who walks into the restaurant Citronelle, and take note of where Mel Davis seats them.
[Source: Elle Magazine (PDF)]
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