Gale Kaufman

Advisory Board

Known for her expertise in the strategy and structure of California's political campaigns, Gale Kaufman has led some of the state’s most significant and successful issue-based initiative campaigns. Since 1998, there hasn’t been an electoral cycle with ballot propositions that Kaufman wasn’t involved in.

While widely recognized for her leadership on over a hundred California State Senate and Assembly campaigns over the years, as well as her strong background in working with labor and business groups running winning independent expenditure campaigns, she has gained even more notoriety for her many decisive victories on prominent statewide ballot initiative campaigns. That is one of the reasons she consistently appears near the top of Capitol Weekly’s annual Top 100 list, why Campaigns & Elections magazine named her one of the nation’s most influential political figures in 2012, and why she is one of only three women inducted into the American Association of Political Consultants Hall of Fame.

Most recently, Kaufman led the successful campaigns for two prominent 2016 ballot measures, Propositions 55 and 64. Proposition 55, which extended income tax rates on the wealthiest Californians, won with over 60% of the vote. Proposition 64, which legalized marijuana, attracted the broadest coalition and received the highest vote share of any of the eight states to pass a legalization measure to date.

In the 2014 General Election, Kaufman led the winning team for the "No on Proposition 46" campaign, assembling an unprecedented bipartisan coalition of over four hundred organizations across the political spectrum and delivering a precisely crafted message across all available media platforms. Early polling by Prop 46’s proponents showed the measure receiving over 70% support, yet Kaufman and her team defeated it by more than two to one.

In the 2012 General Election, Kaufman led a coalition of labor, business and good government organizations to defeat Proposition 32, which aimed to restrict union dues collection. “In perhaps their most important victory, unions defeated a California ballot measure that would have prohibited them from collecting money for political purposes through payroll deductions.” (Unions Show Muscle, Spent Millions in State Race, Associated Press, 11/19/2012). Kaufman was also instrumental in getting Proposition 30 on the November 2012 ballot, which has helped the state restore cuts to K-14 public schools.

One of Kaufman’s most notable triumphs was in the 2005 statewide special election. She was the lead consultant for the Alliance for a Better California’s successful fight against a series of ballot initiatives, proposed by then-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, which aimed to take away workers’ rights, threatened teacher tenure, and cut funding from public schools. Schwarzenegger had a total of four deceptive measures on the ballot, and with the help of the coalition led by Kaufman, all four were defeated.

Kaufman has served as a political consultant to the California Teachers Association for twenty years. She lives in Sacramento with her husband, Steve Murakami.