A note from Robin Swanson, General Consultant and Campaign Manager for the California Consumer Privacy Act:

President Harry Truman once said: “It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.”

Campaigns, especially successful ones, are always chock full with passionate people who do a lot of work behind the scenes for a cause bigger than themselves. This year’s landmark passage of AB 375, the California Consumer Privacy Act, was no different. On this particular campaign, there were lots of caring, smart people who felt compelled to lend their expertise and most importantly, their time, to the righteous cause of giving consumers back basic rights over their personal information.

I’m so grateful for the team of people who put their heads down and just got the job done: every. single. day.

From the interns who made personal phone calls to more than 3,800 Democratic Party delegates and staffed booths, to the press secretary who meticulously responded to media inquiries from all over the world, to the attorney who drafted and redrafted initiative language spending literally hundreds of hours pouring over every detail, to the staff who drove across California to visit local Democratic Clubs, to the digital crew that generated creative ways to engage people online,  to the polling firms that helped us understand what voters were thinking, there was a team of people – men and women - working tirelessly and lending their skills and passion to getting the job done well.

We were small, but we were mighty.

But even with the satisfaction of our historic victory, when the wheels stop grinding at a break-neck pace, sometimes we need a moment to reflect.  And for anyone who feels that they deserve more credit than they received in any one particular news story, I get it.  

As a woman who started my own political consulting firm 10 years ago, I know how it feels to leave it all on the field, and wonder if anybody noticed when the dust settles.  In fact, because so many women do great work that goes unnoticed, my female colleagues and I created a network called #WinLikeAGirl in 2014 to shine a light on women in the business of politics.

In that spirit, I’d like to acknowledge some of the women who helped get the job done daily for our campaign, including: Mary Stone Ross, Inez Kaminski, Cassidy Noblejas Bartolomei, Marissa Anderson, Marisa Becerra and Kendall Shain, for starters, not to mention our female-run accounting team Shawnda Deane and Brandee Spencer.

At the end of the day, I hope we can all relish in the shared victory, knowing that the part we played resulted in a bigger win than we could’ve imagined; making California the first state in the nation to pass groundbreaking privacy legislation that has already generated a global discussion about how to better protect ALL consumers and their personal information.

Thanks to everyone who poured their heart and soul into making a difference. We did. And it mattered.