Capitol Weekly’s Top 100: Gale Kaufman

TOP 100 HALL OF FAME

Gale Kaufman is such a titan that this isn’t even the first Hall of Fame she’s been inducted into. She is in the Hall of Fame for the American Association of Political Consultants, who describe her as “widely acknowledged as the preeminent Democratic issue-based initiative consultant in California. Kaufman has led some of the State’s most significant and successful initiative campaigns since opening her campaign management firm, Kaufman Campaign Consultants (now Kaufman Strategies) in 1987 – a true trailblazer as one of the few female full-service campaign consultants in the country.” As quaint as it seems now, the mindset then was still that running campaigns was too tough for a woman. Well, folks, good luck finding any man tougher than Gale Kaufman, then or now. Legendary Assembly Speaker Willie Brown recognized Kaufman’s unique skills, tapping her in 1992 to become the first woman to serve as director of the Speaker’s Office of Majority Services, itself a legendary office in Capitol community lore. But Kaufman made her name primarily as a consultant, operating her own firm. She’s managed more than 100 candidate campaigns and countless independent expenditure campaigns in addition to her work on ballot measure fights. Kaufman uniquely works – and has success – with both labor and business groups and has on at least three occasions defeated ballot box attacks on union members’ free speech. In 2006 the American Association of Political Consultants named her “National Campaign Manager of the year” for her work on, ahem, beating the hell out of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s four special election initiatives in 2005. Kaufman is powerful and influential and widely respected (or is it feared?) because she is so good at what she does. For decades just the knowledge that she was on the other side of an issue gave her counterparts reason to consider going some other route. And while she has stepped back from the enormous workload she carried for decades, she still consults for select clients who know there is no one more informed, more strategic, more competitive and more committed to winning than Gale Kaufman.

Updated Aug. 6, 2024