Ms. Renee Amar
Executive Director of 'Louisiana Women Lead' Spoke with The BEC
The BEC recently had the pleasure to speak with Renee Amar, Executive Director of ‘Louisiana Women Lead.’ For those of you unfamiliar with Ms. Amar and her organization, we’re very pleased to introduce her to you….
We began at the beginning…
‘Louisiana Women Lead’ is an organization that inspires and trains center-right women to run for office. That’s our mission in a nutshell. I’ve been in the political world for about 20 years now and grew up in a home where my Dad was a small business owner, so I’ve always had free enterprise in my heart. But I’ve watched our political system, especially in the state of Louisiana and have always noticed that we just really don’t have a lot of center-right women that run for office.
There are three Republican women in the state Senate…
Sharon Hewitt (Slidell), Beth Mizell (Franklinton) and Heather Cloud (Ville Platte) are a nice trio in the Senate, but it’s an anomaly. So, I’ve always been inspired and wanted to see more center-right women get in politics.
Amar’s organization began with a start-up boost…
I run a thing with a girlfriend called The Policy Circle… Women get together three times a year and instead of reading a book you read these federal policy briefs that are largely based on free enterprise. So we go to the conference in Chicago a few years ago and I’m networking the room and one of the ladies I met was the founder and one of the board members for an organization called WPLN, the ‘Women’s Public Leadership Network.’ They kicked it off about maybe four years ago and they’re trying to set up organizations like myself around the nation to get more center-right women involved in politics.
The WPLN provided seed money to ‘Louisiana Women Lead.’
Ms. Amar discussed the assumptions at work, different for men and women in politics…
I’ve been a lobbyist for a while now, and it’s something of a “man’s world” in lobbying. Politics leans that way, too. It’s assumed that when boys are growing up that if they want to run for office they tell people they’re going to do that and they go out and do it. And it’s a really different culture for women. I think a lot of Conservatives have a problem with our organization because they view it as “identity politics” and I just don’t view it that way.
We asked about the point made on the LWL website that 18% of the legislature are women. Does this mean she seeks a “quota”?
No. There are two things: No identity politics and we don’t seek quotas. But also I think overcoming barriers is a difficult concept for some people… When you look at the federal level, you see women Democrats… you see AOC and Nancy Pelosi and “The Squad.” There’s a voice that’s missing from the policy-making table. You’ve got Conservative and liberal men and liberal women there, but we seem to be missing that center-right Conservative woman at the table. And she has an important voice. And we’ve seen that especially in the elections of the last couple of years. They call them “Mama Bears” that have gotten involved in their kid’s school board races and local elections. So I’m not just seeking women to run for office but I want to make sure that more center-right women are being engaged in politics, period.
We asked if the influence of women derives not as much from their number, but their perspective….
Men and women are different and we view problems and solutions differently. Biologically, mentally, emotionally, we’re different. I think that the skill set being brought to the state capitol is incredibly important and it’s something that’s missing. And what upsets me is that it’s people on the far right that fight me on this the most. Nobody’s saying there’s a legal barrier going on here, but there’s a cultural barrier.
We mention that the extreme Left and the extreme Right would be upset with her ambitions, but for different reasons. The Left objects to her goals and looks upon her with contempt as women who are traitorous to their gender, while the Right, the far Right specifically, is uncomfortable with women in the space. Yes? “Absolutely. That’s exactly it.”
We took a bit of a detour and discussed Ms. Amar’s view of what constitutes the “far Right and the far Left” …
I think the far Right and the far Left is an inflexibility, so there’s a rigid belief system, and you need to tow the line on a list of beliefs, you have to check off these ten things on a list, or else you’re a RINO (Republican In Name Only.) So what I’ve learned about policy is that the only way we end up with effective policy that creates a rising tide to raise all boats is when we have all the different voices at the table and what you end up with is something that’s not far Right or far Left, but a compromise on the edges usually to come to a place with really good policy. I’m incredibly fiscally Conservative, for example, but I also see a need for a ‘safety net.’ I’ve been a single mother before where my husband picked up and left and I wasn’t in college at the time and I wasn’t working and I was staying at home taking care of my kids. There was a need for me to figure out how I was going to feed my kids in the short term. That doesn’t mean I was going to sit on the dole and collect food stamps, but to me that diverges from the far Right principle that we don’t need a safety net.
We returned to tighter topic with a look a party messaging… “I feel like our side has to get ahold of our messaging to win going forward,” she said.
We discussed how it’s the deportment of Conservatives, generally, to leave one another alone, which, considering the political environment of our times, may not be serving us so well right now…
I say this all the time that we’re busy. We’re busy being ourselves and being individuals and embracing our individualism in society. Too busy working. Too busy volunteering. Too busy, while I feel like the Left is much more organized and they’re busy organizing us and we don’t even know they’re doing it. Every single time we have an election we’re behind the Eight Ball from what they’re doing. We live in this 24-hour news cycle now and that fits perfectly with what the Left does because they have this “on the surface” argument.
‘Louisiana Women Lead’ runs a training program for women interested in running for office…
We held our first training last year, in the midst of Covid. Our vision is two a year… What I do like is that we’ll focus on aspects of the campaign that candidates need to know about ahead of time. We’re a resource for them to start off with and that’s already bearing itself out, and I want them to understand data enough to know, for example, that spending on an $8,000 poll once a month, that’s a bad use of their resources. Or consultants telling them to drop mail in particular places at particular times, they know that that’s not a good use of their money and they can have the confidence to push back. That’s not a good use of their money. It’s something that we see not happen anywhere near enough in that world.
I have a political action committee that raises money that goes to candidates that align with our values and we don’t want to see our money wasted. And eventually we might see that candidates aren’t using money as they needed to and we don’t win those races. I hope we’re seeing things holistically.
She spoke of the need for greater coordination among Conservatives, generally. And that the training program and the ‘Louisiana Women Lead’ project addresses this need.
Are there things that women can bring to bear in a unique way that will speak to the damage that primarily Leftist women are doing?
I always think I’ve seen the end of the damage that they do and then they surprise me. But a great example of what women can do… I don’t know if you’ve met Senator Sharon Hewitt at all. There are other women in the capitol who have done this, but this is a crystal clear example of what women can do….
So Sharon is an engineer that works for Shell Chemical in her work life. She retires and raises kids and is a PTA Mom… and at some point she decides she wants to run for office. And the guy she was running against was a guy that had previously served, and she had been told she should “wait her turn” for the man to run.
She was at an event in Saint Tammany Parish and it’s a very NIMBY sort of place and there was an issue about fracking that came up. And the man running didn’t want to address it, and yet, one night at one of the policy forums someone asked if fracking is safe. And Sharon, thank God, is an engineer and was just able to address that issue head-on. And say, these are the facts. These are the figures. And you’ve got nothing to be afraid of and let’s not create hyperbole on this issue. And it stopped everyone in their tracks. And women can sometimes have that unique ability to address those situations where it doesn’t feel aggressive. She just laid it out. And that’s much more of what we need on our side, and not just responding with rhetoric.
The Louisiana Women Lead website is here.
The Big Easy Conservative expresses our gratitude to Ms. Renee Amar.