Five Democratic Congresswomen Want to Talk About Anything but Donald Trump

An incomplete list of things it seems Representative Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) would rather discuss than the president of the United States: health care, infrastructure, jobs, trade, the opioid crisis, gun violence prevention, education, drug costs, and…peanut butter. Granted, I met the freshman congresswoman at the start of September—a simpler time. And so we spend at least four minutes on peanut butter.

(She likes Jif. If she leaves politics, she would think about a next life in peanut butter entrepreneurship. And at her office she stocks bushels of roasted Virginia-grown peanuts for visitors to take home.)

Spanberger is in New York with four of her fellow congresswomen—Reps. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.), Chrissy Houlahan (D-Penn.), Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), and Elaine Luria (D-Va.).

The women travel like this a lot, a group less well known to the public than another squad that’s made headlines over the past 12 months. (It is easier—it should be noted—to remain low-profile when the president of the United States hasn’t made you the relentless object of his racist and sexist instincts.) Slotkin recalls late-night pizza runs. Houlahan is in a crisp, sleek shift dress but promises she has a half-drunk bottle of minibar wine in her purse. Spanberger is deadpan and droll. Sherrill, the cheerleader. The women are at evident ease with one another. It’s not just that their principles and aims are similar; it’s that their experiences are. In 2018 each flipped a red district to blue. All are new to electoral politics. And all five have had some background in national service.

The group has made the trip from Washington to New York this time with New Politics, an organization that campaign veteran Emily Cherniack founded to recruit and support candidates with experience in national service, from veterans of the armed forces to Americorps alumni. With that emphasis in mind, it’s perhaps no surprise that in an almost 60-minute roundtable with Glamour, the word impeachment isn’t mentioned once.

But less than two weeks after their trip to New York, news breaks about a whistleblower complaint. Reports trickle out: Trump, Ukraine, a “favor.” And then it happens fast. Calls for impeachment grow, not just in liberal enclaves but in the districts these women represent. Sherrill starts to hear from conservative constituents who feel the president has crossed a line. The women who volunteer in Slotkin’s district offices are incensed. Their text thread explodes. And in the back-and-forth, it’s clear that the calculus is different now: This is bad, and inaction isn’t an option.

Within a matter of hours, the five, with Reps. Gil Cisneros (D-Calif.) and Jason Crow (D-Colo.), coauthor an op-ed that breaks the dam. The president is not above the law, and if the reports are substantiated, an impeachment investigation must be undertaken. For months, the women, who are white, had resisted impeachment—at odds with not just more progressive members of the House but also several presidential candidates. So when CNN later releases a video that heralds the group as “leaders on impeachment,” the backlash is instant. As critics note, the true “leaders on impeachment” were in fact women of color like Reps. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), who called for it from the start of the Trump administration and were met not with praise but sustained threats and attacks.

Even so, the op-ed has an undeniable impact. The next afternoon Pelosi announces that she’s come to the same conclusion. To political pundits, the sequence tells its own narrative. It was said that Pelosi resisted formal impeachment proceedings in part to protect the most vulnerable members of her caucus, the same people who had delivered to Democrats control of the House and, to Pelosi, the gavel. With these women on the record, Pelosi could make her move.

“This wasn’t a tough decision,” Sherrill later told the New York Times. “This was sort of an obvious decision.” Someone had asked her earlier who had led the crusade—to come out for impeachment, to write the op-ed, to open the floodgates. No one had, she said. She, Luria, and Houlahan are all veterans. Spanberger and Slotkin served in the CIA. Their aim is consensus, no bombshells. But of course, call for the dismissal of the president of the United States, and expect some fireworks.

“I fight so hard against this idea that we’re moderate,” Sherrill tells me. “Of course that’s [the word] people use to describe us, but I fight it tooth and nail because I don’t think anything about what we had to do seems moderate or simple.” (Slotkin, who self-identifies as a moderate, doesn't see it as an exclusive descriptor: “We’re passionate progressives!”)

When this administration is over, Sherrill points out, what’s broken will not be fixed overnight. The environment, guns, education, our relationships with allies—“moderation” or, as Sherill puts it, the idea that “we can just toe the line,” won’t solve it.

Here the women discuss their political ideologies, their legislative priorities, and how damn hard it is to find a suffragette white suit in the dead of winter.

Glamour: It’s so clear that there are real friendships in this room, although you’ve been in office for less than a year. How did the group come together?

Mikie Sherrill: We all met while we were campaigning for Congress. We had entered the race and gotten together because we worked with a lot of the same organizations: women’s organizations, veterans’ organizations. So we got to know each other. Then when we started serving in Congress, it was a natural thing for us to gravitate toward each other, because we not only had similar backgrounds, but we also had similar districts. Each of us flipped a red district.

Chrissy Houlahan: I also think it has to do with the fact that none of us had ever done this before. We had never run for office. And we didn’t see people like us in Congress, either. So finding each other on the campaign trail, we could ask questions of one another. How are you surviving? How are you managing with your family? And I couldn’t find a whole lot of people to have those conversations with.

*Given that your terms are just two years, you barely get any time to just bask. You have to go right back to campaigning and defending your seat. But at any point did you have that moment, like, We did this"?

Abigail Spanberger: [Laughs.] I think we did that for one day, and then we got to work.

Elaine Luria: Yes, I was thinking that! It was the State of the Union.

Sherrill: That was it—State of the Union. You just had a moment to be at an event that I quite frankly never thought I would attend. That was the moment.

Elissa Slotkin: We all took a picture together, and you don’t have a chance to take a lot of nice photos. Mostly it’s just us snapping pictures of each other. So that’s the one picture I’ve framed and put up in my office. It was an incredible moment, but the enormity of the work just hits you immediately.

It’s nice to look back on that because when you come to Congress, you’re really encouraged to do your own thing, think only about yourself and your district. But I think we found that we’re stronger when we’re together. And working together now these past few months, we’ve really defied a lot of people’s ideas about how congressmen and -women are supposed to behave. Because in the beginning, we heard a lot of “You just don’t do that.”

Sherrill: I remember I went to someone who I’d known from before I was elected and said, “Oh, should we all get together and talk about a plan for this? Think about where were want to go?” He looked and me and went, “It’s really generally every man for himself.”

Houlahan: It’s a dog-eat-dog world, absolutely.

In that environment, have you ever checked in with each other after something happens, to be like, “Is this normal?”

Spanberger: Every day. Every single day we do that.

Houlahan: I keep a list of all that. Literally, I write them down, because I want to remember that this is not normal. I don’t want this to become normal. So I write down all of the things that I think are super offensive, or super broken, or super wrong, so that I can reflect back on them and not become part of the problem.

Slotkin: We have a never-ending text chain between us, and that’s what we do. “Did anyone else get this set of talking points? Did anyone else see this bill that came forward that we’re supposed to be voting on? Does anyone else have concerns about how this?”

Sherrill: Or sometimes it’s “Does anybody else know how we’re supposed to find a white suit in the middle of January?”

Spanberger: That one. That is a big one.

Luria: I ordered mine on Ebay. But Mikie has this Brooks Brothers suit that I like, and I saw it was on clearance. I was like, I want that suit, but what if Mikie and I show up in the same suit on the same day?

Sherrill: That would be amazing.

Luria: I could have just said, “It’s our Naval Academy uniform.” Who would have known?

Despite your lack of experience in politics, all five of you won these difficult races and I presume learned a lot about how to win difficult races in 2018. How much do you feel that experience and expertise are respected now?

[Laughter.]

Sherrill: That’s great.

Houlahan: [Clears throat.]

Sherrill: We were just talking about this. Abigail and I were just talking about this, because we had this sense—and at the time we didn’t know how naive it was—that we could draw on our life experiences and run. And when we told people that we wanted to do that, there was a lot of “Uh, sure.”

Houlahan: “How cute.”

Spanberger: “Sweet.”

Sherrill: Like, “That’s awesome.” But I think part of the reason a lot of us who are new to politics were able to get in and flip these districts is because people who had been in politics for a while just didn’t see the path. We were so engaged in our neighborhoods and with people throughout our communities that we knew something different was happening. I could feel it in my town, talking to moms in the car line. Hundreds of people came to an event for civic education. We could sense a shift. And then…well, Elissa has the best line on this.

Spanberger: Elissa, explain our advice.

Slotkin: I’m from Michigan, which is one of the big swing states that we have to win if we’re going to win in 2020. At every event people say to me, “How are we going to win Michigan? How do we do it? What’s the magic?” And I always say, “If you want to win in Michigan, just look at how we won in Michigan.”

A moderate Democratic woman won as governor, secretary of state, attorney general, senator, and congresswoman. The top five spots on my ticket were all moderate Democratic women. So it’s not rocket science.

What does it mean to be a moderate Democratic woman?

Slotkin: We’re pragmatists in Michigan, right? And we are focused on flipping our state, and flipping our districts. And to do that in this state, we have to appeal to a broad range of people. Not just the most active and the loudest, but people who are swing voters, who maybe aren’t as political, who want to hear a positive vision of the country and not just criticism of Donald Trump, who want to know that their leaders are pragmatic, decent people.

I know the reason a lot of us won in districts that weren’t supposed to go for Democrats, because I’ll have women—and I’m sure we all do—who come up to me and tell me, “Listen, I’m not a Democrat, and I don’t agree with everything I think you believe in, but I think you have integrity, so I’m going to go for you.”

Sherrill: Absolutely.

Houlahan: It’s about the fact that we all agree on so much. At our town halls we have people write their questions on cards, which we collect. We didn’t read this one out, but one just said, "Thank you." Thank you for being a voice of reason. Thank you for representing all of us. No, a lot of people don’t agree with me 100% of the time. But there are Republicans and Democrats and Independents who do agree with me 80% of the time. On health care, on jobs, on education, the environment, gun safety.

Spanberger: When I was running, the amount of time I spent with people I knew would never, ever vote for me? I did that on purpose. The whole time I planned on winning. I intended to win. And when I did, I wanted to have respect for people who don’t think like I do and I wanted to listen to them and understand what is it that matters to them. How could I bring them into the conversation?

That informs how I talk about a lot of issues. Take health care. If we want to solve the issue, if our common goal is to make health care more affordable and give people more access, let’s talk about that. Let’s explain that it’s not just an emotional issue or a moral issue. It’s an economic issue. When we have people who are missing their work or losing their jobs because they are sick or their kids are sick or if people are foreclosing on their homes because of medical bills, that has an economic impact. When people are showing up at the emergency room, and they don’t have health insurance, and they get life-stabilizing treatment, that impacts all of us.

Some people can run on “I want health care for everyone because I believe in it.” That’s great. But for us, we need to broaden it. People tell me, “I don’t want to pay for other people’s health care.” Well, you already are.

Now that you’re in office, is that bipartisanship that you ran on and that you saw in your districts—is that materializing?

Houlahan: I think there is a lot more bipartisanship than people would think. The problem is it’s hard to get it through the larger bodies.

Slotkin: You have to work at it. When we all came in, all of us had a mandate from our districts to work across the aisle. The first week we said, “We’re going to every bipartisan cocktail hour! We’re going to invite these folks over for a drink.”

Sherrill: Make a Republican friend every day!

And does that…work?

Sherrill: When we showed up to orientation, we had different buses. We had a Republican bus and a Democratic bus.

Which bus was better?

Spanberger: Well, I can tell you which bus had more room on it.

Slotkin: To overcome that, though, you really do have to work hard. And you have to be smart. I had a bill in front of me that should have been a bipartisan bill. The language in it, it’s something both sides agree on. But it wasn’t. Someone came to me and said, “Make this bipartisan.” And I said, “Well, it’s too late. We have 120 Democrats on this bill, and that’s not going to work.”

It’s like Noah’s Ark, right? It has to be two at a time. Because otherwise it looks like a Democratic bill, and Republicans will think there’s something in it that won’t work for them.

I understand that there’s this genuine desire to work together and to work across the aisle. Do your Republican peers have that same impulse? Because it seems like this group thinks a lot about it, and I wonder if that’s reciprocated.

Spanberger: Some of them do. But I think the problem is greater than that. And it’s twofold.

First, gerrymandering is a major part of it. We are people who flipped districts, so we’ll always have to work hard for every single vote if we want to maintain our seats. Then you have people who were elected from deeply Democratic districts or deeply Republican districts, and if those people are seen as too bipartisan, they might get dinged for it, or if they support something that’s a little bit too middle-of-the-road, they might get primaried from the left or from the right.

Second, we live in this flashy world. We constantly have to remind people that actually we’re doing a lot of work. Because if you’re paying attention in the social media space or who’s on the cover of this magazine or that, it seems more like Congress is for superstars than it is for work.

Luria: But you’re actually the superstar. You’re a CIA spy! That’s a lot cooler than some other people.

What’s the hardest part about this job? The thing that’s surprised you most about what it takes to do this?

Slotkin: The hardest thing for me is as a CIA officer and a Pentagon official, I’ve always worked in chain-of-command organizations. There’s someone in charge, and then there is a rule. You can have vociferous debate, but once a decision is made, we move out. There are no hard feelings, because the mission is more important. Not here. Congress is 435 entrepreneurs, and so relationships matter so much. I was the one who walked around for the first six weeks, like, “Who’s got the strategic plan? What’s the plan?”

Spanberger: She did do that.

Sherrill: It’s true. She was like, “What’s the play? Because I’ll run the play, as long as I know what the play is.”

Slotkin: And then I was convinced that there was a play, but I was new, so they weren’t telling me.

Sherrill: I feel like we all went through that period. Like, “When are we going to get our brief?”

Slotkin: It turns out—

Sherrill: It seems like other people are talking about a plan.

Slotkin: There is no strategic plan. This is a consensus-based organization. For folks who have served and spent their lives in a different work environment, that was new. I’m still adjusting to that.

Houlahan: I served, but I also spent most of my career in entrepreneurship. This is an environment that I’m used to. So that’s the part I’m comfortable with. The part that I’m uncomfortable with is that this organization doesn’t reward people who put their head down and get their work done. We are not unicorns—the five of us sitting at this table. There are a lot of people like us, but people only hear about a few. We want to make sure we’re broadcasting the work that we’re doing, we’re broadcasting how effective we’re being for our communities.

Spanberger: I would love to spend a week without having to answer for something that somebody else just said on TV, because they have this space to do it, and it doesn’t impact them. With all of these 435 members kind of doing their own thing, you’ll have some people say bombastic things. And then those of us who are having town halls regularly are having to answer for them.

Sherrill: But it’s also great that we have found each other. That we are working together and doing something that’s a little different. Because we have so much to do.

Luria: I know we said just a second ago that there’s no reward for just putting your head down and doing the work, but when you take it back to your district and you think about the impact you can have on people’s lives? It’s real. I mean, we’ve recouped over a half a million dollars for constituents in social security benefits this year. We helped someone get citizenship, and then my team went to his swearing-in ceremony. It’s never the thing that’s going to make a headline. But day after day, that’s what makes this fulfilling.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

Mattie Kahn is the senior culture editor at Glamour.

Originally Appeared on Glamour