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When it comes to training and recruiting Democratic women to run for office, no organization comes close to Emerge America. By the 2016 election, Emerge’s fingerprints were all over victories for Democratic women in almost two dozen states. And fueled by a backlash from women to former President Donald Trump’s election, its leaders wanted to go even bigger. 

Emerge wanted to bring its prowess in urging women into political leadership to all 50 states, and quickly. The organization was building what its leader, A’shanti Gholar, described in 2017 as an “old girls club,” following a tried-and-true formula for success anchored in local teams with boots on the ground in each of its states. 

Six years later, Emerge America and its state-based affiliates have trained thousands more women — 1,300 of whom serve in elected office in 35 states — launched new training programs and expanded into several new states. Emerge boasts a Cabinet secretary, eight members of Congress and 24 statewide officials among its alumni. 

That growth hasn’t come without costs. Heading into 2024, Emerge America is now facing disarray in some of its key states and grappling with discontent from staff. 

In the past two years, Emerge America has cut all ties with its Colorado chapter and halted on-the-ground operations in Alabama and Louisiana, two chapters in the deep South launched after the 2016 election — a product of financial headwinds and mounting tensions between national and state-based staff. 

In interviews with The 19th, former Emerge staffers said fundraising pressures have contributed to the tense relationship between Emerge’s national leaders and some state executive directors, who feel like they’re competing for donations to support both national operations and state-led recruiting and training efforts.

Most of the executive directors who lead Emerge’s operations in the states work as one-person teams tasked with raising tens of thousands of dollars, recruiting and training candidates, and running social media accounts. A lack of support and inadequate pay, former Emerge staff said in interviews, have resulted in fraught environments and high turnover among Emerge state-based staff. 

A recently formed worker’s union, Emerge United, said in a statement that “periods of rapid growth and changes in leadership in recent years have led to an uneven foundation at Emerge.” The union is actively negotiating for “fair and consistent treatment of all staff,” including executive directors, and a “positive environment and culture.”

Emerge America, in a statement to The 19th, said staffers working on the ground are “supported consistently” by the national office, a sentiment that was echoed by at least two current executive directors.

Virginia state Senator-elect Danica Roem, who this fall became the first trans state senator in the South, said she runs Emerge Virginia as a one-person team while campaigning and serving in office. She said she’s had a positive relationship with Emerge, from being a recruit through her current role as an executive director. “I feel completely supported by Emerge America,” she said. 

But disarray and vacancies in some chapters threaten to undermine Emerge America’s success in training and recruiting women to run for office, and hamper its goal of bringing more diversity to Democrats’ political bench, former staffers say. Candidate training and recruitment have come to a halt in Colorado, one of its most successful states. And Emerge currently has no local training or leaders on the ground in nine states.

“They grew too much too fast,” said Serita Fontanesi, who was executive director of Emerge Texas from 2021 to 2022. “They wanted the clout of being in these challenging states like Texas, like Louisiana, like Alabama … but weren’t actually prepared to sustain them.”

This article is based on interviews and conversations with a dozen current and former Emerge staffers and people familiar with the organization as well as documents, emails and audio recordings.

Current and former staffers interviewed by The 19th were unified in their support for Emerge’s mission. They say Emerge America’s biggest strength is its tried-and-true candidate recruitment and training programs, most of which are run by local staff working on the ground. 

“I think that Emerge does a lot of really good work,” said Tyler Kerce, a former operations manager and executive assistant at Emerge America. “And I think that most of that work is the training that the executive directors do on the ground. It really, really benefits candidates. It is excellent training. I believe that it’s probably the best that is out there for Democratic women.”

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Emerge America was founded in California in 2002 by Andrea Dew Steele, a political operative, philanthropy adviser and activist who sought to fill a void of support for Democratic women candidates. Chapters in Arizona and New Mexico replicated the Emerge model and localized it to their states.

By 2016, 17 states had an Emerge America chapter. The organization was attracting national attention for the hundreds of alums who ran for office and their success rate getting elected.

Trump’s election and women’s backlash to it drove a surge in prospective candidates to Emerge and fueled its growth into six more states, including three in the South, bringing it to 23 in 2017. From there, Emerge hoped to expand to 34 states by 2018 and 50 states by 2020. Today, Emerge advertises a presence in 27 states — but only 18 of those states have staff on the ground.

Emerge America launched with a lot of fanfare in Alabama in 2017, a beacon for Democratic women in a state and region that had been all but abandoned by the party’s donors. Within a year, Emerge Alabama had trained 38 women, 23 of whom went on to become candidates in 2018. In Louisiana, which Emerge also started in 2017, 10 alumni currently serve in state and local offices. 

But Emerge’s on-the-ground presence in both states is significantly diminished. The executive director of Emerge’s Louisiana chapter left the organization in early 2022. Then, earlier this year, Emerge laid off the executive director of its Alabama chapter. Emerge never publicly announced that its presence in these states was changing, but with no paid local staff, Emerge Alabama and Emerge Louisiana became shells. Emerge America currently has no plans to fill either executive director vacancy.

“We made the strategic decision as a national organization to change how we approached recruiting and training candidates in Alabama and Louisiana — moves rooted in data that were designed to ensure the success of these states, as well as our entire network of affiliates,” an Emerge spokesperson said in a statement. 

In those states, the organization has moved to a regional candidate training model that includes national and state speakers and access to Emerge’s alumni network, the spokesperson said.

But four former Emerge staff told The 19th that they see removing paid staff from the states as reneging on promises to Democratic women in a region where support is already lacking. The decisions also rankled staff across the country, over a dozen of whom protested it in a staff meeting.

Dr. Stacie Propst, an Alabama native, had returned to her home state after 10 years in Washington, D.C., to help support flailing Democratic causes in the deep-red state. When the opportunity came in 2017 to be the executive director of Emerge Alabama, Propst felt like she was exactly where she was supposed to be, even if progress appeared slow. 

That all changed in March when Propst was laid off. She says she was told that the organization as a whole had not met its fundraising targets for the year. 

“It was out of the blue and there was absolutely no warning whatsoever,” Propst said. “Emerge is a wonderful organization. And it was sort of the pinnacle of what I was trying to achieve in Alabama. I’m just super disappointed.” 

Before being laid off, Propst was poised to receive a significant pay increase if and when the Emerge union reached a contract with Emerge America as part of a push by staff to bring equity to staff salaries, according to her and two other former staffers. They said that at the time, Propst was one of the lowest-paid executive directors. 

An Emerge spokesperson said in a statement that “labor rights are core to the values of Emerge” and that there was no link between a potential pay increase and the elimination of her position. 

Emerge is structured as a 527 electioneering group and not a 501(c)4 nonprofit, meaning that it must pay taxes and disclose its donors; it is not eligible for grants available to not-for-profit groups. Emerge staffers said this dynamic has raised additional barriers to sustaining its operations in the already-competitive political arena. Federal tax filings show that while Emerge America ended 2021 with a $51,000 surplus, the organization spent $286,132 more than it brought in revenue in 2022. While publicly available information for 2023 is incomplete, tax filings from January 1 to June 30 show Emerge has spent about $177,000 more than it has raised from donors. 

“Emerge has been clear that, like many organizations, we continue to face a difficult fundraising environment,” an Emerge America spokesperson said in a statement. 

To Emerge staff, it appeared as if growth at the national level had come at the expense of localized training in Alabama. 

"Either way, a critical piece of infrastructure in the South is now vacant,” said Kerce, a national staffer based in California who was laid off at the same time as Propst. “No repercussions on national for not meeting our budgets that then led to affiliates being dropped."

Emerge has had no staff on the ground in Louisiana since early 2022, when its former executive director, Tamara Agins, left the organization. Agins did not respond to interview requests for this article. Emerge America would not comment on personnel matters. 

Both Alabama and Louisiana operate as “affiliate states,” or branches of the national organizations with leaders who report to Emerge America instead of local governing boards. Today, most state chapters operate under that model. Independent states, by contrast, license Emerge’s name and branding but operate independently. Emerge said in a statement that it stopped enrolling new states under this model over a decade ago to provide employees with better benefits, including health care.

Emerge Alabama was not an independent state, which Propst said made it easier to eliminate her position and with it, the chapter’s operations. Before she was laid off, Propst recalled watching the national staff grow and its consultants targeting Alabama donors to bring money into national coffers. Propst said Emerge had also disbanded a local volunteer board that advised her. 

An Emerge spokesperson said the organization has, in recent years, replaced boards of directors in many states with “cabinets” made up of state-based volunteers who advise executive directors, national staff, alumni and candidates. The spokesperson said that Emerge is working to grow cabinets in Alabama and Louisiana. 

Emerge staff and union leaders shared their frustration about the layoffs and Emerge’s changing presence in the South with a protest during a virtual staff meeting in March. Emerge United said in a statement the layoffs have “demoralized all employees and weakened the organization.” A screenshot shared with The 19th showed staff members had changed their background photos to an image of a raised fist and Emerge United’s logo. 

The union said its members believe that “consistent and continued investment in the South is essential to any progressive strategy,” and that it opposes “any shift to regional based models” from Emerge’s successful state-based and on-the-ground presence.

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Meanwhile, Emerge America leaders were dealing with a different problem simmering out west that reached a boiling point this summer. 

Emerge Colorado was about to celebrate its 10-year anniversary training Democratic women for public office in the state, where women hold 49 out of 100 legislative seats. Twenty-one are Emerge alumni.

Behind the scenes, a tense contract dispute between Emerge Colorado’s leaders and Emerge America’s top brass had been ongoing for about a year, with few signs of progress. Emerge Colorado’s former leaders say the differences boiled down to how much control Emerge America would have over the state organization, particularly over its list of donors.

Tensions finally spilled out into the open in July when, in an email to supporters, Gholar, Emerge’s president, announced that Emerge America was “immediately” severing ties with its Colorado affiliate based on an “extensive investigation” that showed actions “inconsistent with our values” and that “unquestionably violated” its contract. Gholar said Emerge Colorado’s leadership had made “an amicable resolution impossible.” 

It was the first time in Emerge America’s 20-year history that the organization had formally severed ties with the leaders of one of its independent chapters — nevermind one of its oldest and most successful. For Emerge Colorado’s leaders, the decision amounted to a “hostile takeover” based on a contract dispute, while local Emerge supporters say the lack of transparency and treatment of an organization that was led by women of color was rattling. 

The impact to Colorado was immediate: Emerge no longer has boots on the ground in the state, which means local recruiting and training has come to a halt. 

A year earlier, Lisa Calderón, the former executive director of Emerge Colorado, had become the first woman of color to lead the organization. Quickly, she took issue with the organization’s contract.

Specifically, the contract allows state leaders to use the Emerge America name and, in exchange, Emerge America receives access to the chapters’ donor and alumni lists for fundraising and marketing. Calderón described these lists as the most valuable asset of the entire operation. 

During contract negotiations, Calderón and Emerge Colorado’s board of directors sought to take legal ownership of the lists and to have input on marketing emails sent to their donors and alumni by the national organization — both the frequency and language — to protect local fundraising efforts.  

Emerge Colorado was among eight states that operated as independent chapters of Emerge America, using the Emerge name through a contract with the national group. Calderón said that some of Emerge Colorado’s concerns about its contract were shared by leaders in five of the seven other independent states — California, Maryland, Oregon, Kentucky and Massachusetts. 

The executive director of Emerge Nevada, another independent Emerge chapter, said she, too, supported protecting the power of state leaders over fundraising emails, but described the effort by independent state leaders led by Calderón to be unproductive and, at times, hostile toward national staff. “Any concerns I have are also mixed with concern that the national organization is healthy, and that it can continue to lead,” said Danna Lovell, who joined Emerge in 2017 and said her efforts in Nevada are well supported by national Emerge leaders.

Lovell said leaders in the other independent states ultimately renewed their contracts with Emerge in May. Soon after, Emerge America and Emerge Colorado reached an impasse.

Emerge America leaders did not mention contract disputes in the July announcement announcing the separation from Emerge Colorado. The statement, reported on by Colorado Public Radio and The Denver Post at the time, and distributed widely in the state, accused Emerge Colorado leadership of mismanagement.

Calderón said she believed — but was never explicitly told — that the inquiry centered around two public incidents: claims that an Emerge Colorado staffer made disparaging remarks about a sexual assault victim and a complaint that Calderón used Emerge Colorado polling to benefit her failed bid for Denver mayor in the spring. The Denver Elections Commission dismissed a related complaint, declaring that the allegations did not support “plausible” campaign finance violations. 

Calderón told The 19th that Emerge America’s claims of mismanagement don’t paint the full picture of the dispute and were used as a pretense to publicly explain the separation.

In a June meeting between Emerge Colorado and Emerge America leaders, a recording of which was obtained by The 19th, a top Emerge leader confirmed that the organization had been considering cutting ties before its investigation into misconduct. 

Jill Barkley Roy, who oversees the management of Emerge’s state affiliates, called the meeting to notify Emerge Colorado that the organization intended to end its affiliation and wanted to publicize it as a mutual decision to separate. Barkley Roy, when asked what prompted the decision, said, “We did conduct an investigation on our end. But I think that even before that, I think that there are different goals, and maybe different methods to accomplish what I think is ultimately a shared mission here of changing the face of politics.” 

Emerge America declined to comment on the separation beyond Gholar’s July 12 email to supporters announcing its split with the Colorado chapter. But a Colorado political consultant familiar with the situation disagreed with Calderón’s depiction of a takeover. 

“This is about many different layers, including Emerge national, its board, and its funders not having faith in the leadership of Emerge Colorado, believing it’s important to have an affiliate in Colorado and taking the steps in order to continue that work," said the consultant. Emerge America suggested The 19th speak to the consultant, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of the separation. 

In August, Calderón and the members of the Emerge Colorado board announced the launch of a new candidate training program called Women Uprising, which has the backing of prominent Democrat-aligned groups. All but one of the Emerge Colorado board members are now serving on that organization's board, including former board chair Kat Traylor.

Emerge America has said it will continue to have a presence in Colorado, though it’s not immediately clear what shape it will take. 

“Emerge Colorado 2.0 Coming Soon,” Emerge America’s website reads. 

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In interviews with The 19th, five former state and national staff said expectations for executive directors, a demanding role, could be unclear. Some state executive directors have felt unsupported by the national organization and raised concerns that Emerge’s structure has left them competing with headquarters for resources instead of benefiting from the power and connections of national leaders.

“I think Emerge specifically is an organization that wants clout and doesn't want to do the work, which again, is unfortunately not unique,” said Fontanesi, the former Emerge Texas executive director. “They burn and churn EDs who don't fall in line with the way that they want to do business.” 

Emerge United said its top priorities in a union contract are ensuring fair compensation, paid family leave and paid time off for sickness, grieving and “general rejuvenation.” The union said it wants to create an environment and culture that “will help Emerge attract and retain excellent employees” and lives up to the values exemplified by Emerge alums who have successfully enacted progressive workplace policies in their states.

Emerge, pointing to the 74 percent win rate of alums on the ballot in 2023, says its current model has been a successful one.

“Similar to many national organizations with state affiliates, we have one staff member in most of our states,” an Emerge America spokesperson said in a statement. “Where we do have local, on-the-ground staff, they are supported consistently by our national office who provides them with fundraising, communications, recruitment, and other support to help Emerge candidates.” 

In the past three years, at least seven state executive directors have left the organization, including Calderón. Two have been replaced, but nine state executive director positions in the 27 states that Emerge America lists as having chapters are vacant heading into the 2024 election. Emerge is seeking to fill executive director vacancies in Maine, Colorado and Washington in the next year and plans to continue to train candidates in six other states through its national and regional boot camp programs. 

“I saw people come in very excited, and very quickly become jaded by the limitations put on them,” Kerce, the former national staffer, said. “There is a fantastic amount of latitude granted to Emerge management that is not granted to executive directors, in particular.”

Fontanesi said such was her experience. She came to Emerge after working as an organizer for the Texas Democratic Party in part because Emerge America said it would help her meet her goal of raising over $63,000 in her first year.

But Fontanesi didn’t feel Emerge’s approach adequately reflected the challenges of starting up a brand new chapter in a state as large, complex and challenging for Democrats as Texas.

Because the pandemic delayed the launch of Emerge Texas, many of their initial fundraising leads were cold or outdated, she recalled. Winter ice storms in early 2021 and 2022 battered Texas and disrupted her ability to fundraise. She felt in competition with national, whose email fundraising programs targeted Texas donors while her requests for more support, like using part of her budget to hire a part-time fundraising consultant, were denied.

Sometimes, it felt like being in a multi-level marketing (MLM) business, she said. 

“They're so focused on, ‘You need to be fundraising, you need to be recruiting, you have to be doing these things,’ regardless of what is happening in the world around you,” she said. “That's where I'm like, it's giving MLM, like, you gotta be meeting your numbers for your upline.”

Emerge denied that it directly competes with executive directors for funds, with a spokesperson saying that Emerge America “works in close coordination with all our affiliates on fundraising.”

The strain executive directors felt led to tense and emotionally charged atmospheres when staff from around the country gathered at in-person retreats, Kerce and Propst, the former executive director in Alabama, said. Kerce recalled “a lot of anger” from executive directors at the first staff retreat he attended in 2019, “and it was clearly not their first time expressing it.” 

Tensions between some executive directors and national staff flared again during a fall 2021 retreat, five people present at the event recalled. Staffers said Calderón questioned the utility of the programming, namely a session focused on mental health, and turned to concerns about the support the organization was giving state staff. A former national staff member, Marcus Coppola, said the comments offended the staff who helped organize the retreat and prompted Gholar to intervene. Both Calderón and Fontanesi recalled feeling dismissed and being shut down by Gholar.

In February 2022, shortly after her one-year anniversary with Emerge, Fontanesi’s supervisors put her on a performance improvement plan for falling short of her fundraising and training program recruiting goals, according to an audio recording and emails viewed by The 19th. Fontanesi took a three-month unpaid leave of absence for mental health reasons using FMLA, and shortly before she was slated to return to work, she decided to leave Emerge instead. 

“I keep trying to find solutions, and I keep being met with no,” she recalled. “I also keep explicitly saying that the way we're doing this is not working. I am one person for the second-largest state in the entire country.”

Kristal Knight, the former executive director of Emerge Tennessee, said in an interview that she, too, worked as a team of one in her state from 2017 until her departure in mid-2019. Knight said she had “a great time at the organization” and remained a strong supporter of Emerge’s mission. She also said that the job of fundraising, recruiting and training as a one-person team in a large Southern state was challenging and that the pay didn’t always seem equitable state to state.

“Tennessee has two time zones, and it takes 10 hours to get across the state. That's a day plus of driving and meetings. And you're asking women to drive across the state by themselves in some respects,” Knight said. Ultimately, Knight said, she left a job she truly enjoyed because “the pay was just not competitive,” particularly given the expectations of her role. 

Even successful, well-funded chapters have faced challenges heightened by only having one full-time staff member. 

Emerge Oregon, one such chapter, faced a reckoning this year when one of its most prominent alums resigned from office in May amid a scandal over her side gig consulting for the co-owner of an embattled Oregon cannabis dispensary chain and the vice chair of Emerge Oregon’s board. 

“I think it’s fair to say that we’re having serious conversations about how to manage the fact that we are a huge network, at all levels of government, with just one staffer and a volunteer board,” Emerge Oregon’s executive director Annie Ellison told The Oregonian.

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Emerge America, in a statement to The 19th, highlighted the success of its organization in training and recruiting women to run for office.

In Virginia, where Democrats took control of the state legislature this fall, 35 Emerge alumni were on the ballot, and 22 won their races. Both chambers now have a record number of Emerge alumni at 17 delegates and five state senators. 

That includes Roem, the executive director of Emerge Virginia, whom voters elevated to the Virginia Senate from the House of Delegates in a highly competitive Northern Virginia district. 

Emerge’s current executive director in Nevada said her chapter is an example of Emerge’s prowess. In 2020, for example, Emerge Nevada had 18 candidates on the ballot for local judicial seats; 15 won. That success, Lovell said, changed the face of Nevada’s courts and clinched historic firsts, like the first Black woman to be elected to a state family court. 

Those victories, she said, happened with support from Emerge America. “I feel like they support us — they help us in our problems and they support us in our victories,” Lovell said. 

At the same time, disarray within the organization is hampering Emerge’s efforts elsewhere. In Colorado, training and active recruiting have come to a halt, and the organization is facing strong criticism from its local network of alumni. In Alabama and Louisiana, training is no longer driven by leaders on the ground. Emerge United, its union, told The 19th that while collective bargaining is moving forward positively, high turnover continues, with seven union members “moving on from” the organization in the past eight months. 

Emerge America is working to rebuild its local presence in Colorado, its leaders told local alumni during a virtual town hall in mid-September, with a goal of resuming training next year, they said. An Emerge spokesperson said in a statement that the organization is “focused on and invested in Colorado,” citing a recent trip Gholar made to the state to recruit a new executive director and cabinet members.

During that town hall, Emerge America representatives fielded vocal criticism and disappointment over how it severed ties with its local leaders, according to a recording obtained by The 19th. No attendees in the meeting spoke positively about Emerge’s decision to end its relationship with the previous leadership. 

One alum criticized the organization over what she called “a serious lack of transparency” surrounding its decision. Another pointed to the fact that Emerge Colorado’s leadership was the most racially and ethnically diverse slate the organization had ever had. Their removal “under kind of mysterious circumstances” would hamper the organization's efforts to diversify its recruits, the alum said.

Another warned Emerge of running the organization from outside Colorado, calling it “a bad idea.” 

Emerge United told The 19th that it is optimistic that collective bargaining will yield “a strong and positive future” for the staff and the organization. While the two parties haven’t reached an agreement yet, the union said they had established “a framework for consistent compensation levels and are working on how to implement it after years of gross disparities and two years without any pay increases.”

“Since 2020, Emerge has consistently increased salaries, and when we voluntarily agreed to recognize the union, any changes to salaries appropriately moved to the discussions at the bargaining table," an Emerge spokesperson said. "We are looking forward to a fair and final agreement soon."

Support for Emerge America’s mission of elevating more women to political leadership was unwavering among current and former staff members who spoke to The 19th. Localized training led by people with knowledge of their state and support from staff on the ground, they said, are key to the success of that mission.

Propst says having state-based staff who can connect with local donors, help recruit candidates and offer localized training has been essential to Emerge’s success so far, and national control of her state’s chapter will be to the detriment of the organization’s mission. 

“I'm not going to say anything heinous or negative about Emerge because overall, it's been a great organization for many years,” Propst continued. “I just wish they would stick to the model that's been working, and I see that slipping away. That concerns me deeply.”  

Lovell and Roem both said that localized training is key to the success in their states. 

“The best thing about Emerge compared to other training organizations is we have people on the ground in the states where we're working, and that's hugely important politically,” Lovell said. “We get to use trainers that know our state, and that are believable from the front of the room, not someone who just has a national view of things and just more of a generic message.”