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Capitol Weekly’s Top 100: Gale Kaufman

Illustration by Chris Shary

61. Gale Kaufman

The words “campaign strategist” and “Gale Kaufman” are synonymous in Sacramento, and with good reason: She usually wins, and she leaves clients who have a lot of dough – The California Teachers Association, for example –  well satisfied. There was a wrinkle this year, however. She was all set to handle one of the biggest battles of the year, the November ballot initiative dealing with MICRA, when a compromise was reached between an array of deep-pocket interests and the measure was yanked from the ballot. That left her in the lurch, but not to worry: She’s also handling the “no” side of another ballot measure – she didn’t say which one – and all’s well. Meanwhile, her campaign consulting firm, Kaufman Strategies (formerly Kaufman Campaigns) is in the fray with assorted IEs and outside labor consultancies. Her campaign victories – for both lawmakers and ballot measures – are too lengthy to detail here, but two stand out: She led the charge to defeat a quartet of ballot measures pushed by Arnold Schwarzenegger during his governorship, and she successfully led Jerry Brown’s budget-balancing initiatives.

Updated Aug. 9, 2022

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