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Emilie Tenenbaum had worked on campaigns for over a decade and had started a family in New Orleans, a city she loved. But she had long felt a pull to return to Vermont, where she grew up, and raise her own kids there. She was contemplating the move and began asking her friends from back home about the two things she would need to relocate: a job and child care. 

What she didn’t expect was to find the two things were linked. 

The emergency phase of the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to subside, child care programs were fully reopening, and Let’s Grow Kids was gearing up for its next phase of advancing its legislative agenda. Aly Richards had spoken with the board of Let’s Grow Kids, and they’d all agreed it was time to use the connections they’d forged during the pandemic with providers and elected officials to add political pressure as they brought a more ambitious agenda to the State House. 

A friend of Tenenbaum’s put her in touch with Richards. Here’s a group that is doing cool work, Tenenbaum recalls thinking. Richards was looking to bring on a political person who could work with legislators—not as lawmakers, the way Sarah Kenney and Rebecca Ramos did, but as candidates. They would raise money, show up for campaign events, and even consider an endorsement process. It seemed like the next logical step, Richards said, and one they would need someone with sufficient campaign experience to organize. 

In 2021, Tenenbaum accepted the newly created position of campaign director with Let’s Grow Kids Action Network, the political offshoot of Let’s Grow Kids, and moved to Vermont. Within a year, she had a third baby, found child care, and created the first endorsement process for child care champions in the state. Child care was about to get political.

The post-pandemic period marked the time that Let’s Grow Kids Action Network began its political work, and it was at this same time the business community was coalescing around a payroll tax as the funding stream for child care. The two had to go hand in hand, explained Tenenbaum. 

“Once you know you are going to have to raise taxes you have to have a political apparatus,” Tenenbaum said. “My role was to come in and help them raise the political and public will to pass a big bill with revenue.”

Setting up an endorsement process would allow child care to be positioned as a winning issue, and one that lawmakers and candidates would want to put in their platforms and talk about on the campaign trail. From the outset, Tenenbaum was clear that the action network would be transparent: They wouldn’t limit endorsements by party affiliation or extract promises for anything other than child care.

“We wanted to create a big tent,” said Tenenbaum. Anyone who took the Let’s Grow Kids Action Network questionnaire would have to agree that public investment was needed and child care would be one of the issues they championed on the campaign trail. The questionnaire was deliberate about saying “public investment” without specifying what the revenue source should be.

The 2022 election cycle was the first year of ; the 133 post-primary endorsements came out in September.¹ They also decided in 2022 not to oppose any incumbents, though they did offer dual endorsements (more than one candidate) for open seats. They : Most of the 133 endorsements went to Democrats, but at least eight went to Republicans and two to Independents.

Tenenbaum said that over 150 candidates filled out the survey, and a large majority of the candidates who filled out the survey were endorsed. She recalls being surprised at how many Republicans were seeking the endorsement as child care champions, many of whom would later become critical votes.

One Republican legislator, the day after the endorsements were released, called Tenenbaum and demanded he, too, be included as a champion.

Fill out the survey, was her response.

He did, and joined the action network list.

There was one endorsement that came with complications: Republican Gov. Phil Scott. He had largely avoided campaigning during the 2020 election during the pandemic, but he was on the ballot again in 2022.² And through each of Scott’s campaign cycles he had been vocal and consistent that he would in Vermont.

“He was willing to talk about child care and show up at Let’s Grow Kids events,” said Tenenbaum. Scott had a record of supporting incremental expansions to child care assistance in Vermont, and he’d been willing to use general funds for child care. In his , he cited child care as a major economic driver, saying, “We know the benefits of accessible, affordable child care for parents, kids, and our economy,” and allocated another $3 million for the state child care assistance program (CCFAP). Scott had been an ally to child care providers when American Rescue Plan funding became available (even as Republican governors in other states had initially delayed doing so). And in the 2022 budget, he added an additional in funding to the CCFAP.

“The first endorsement process was really about bringing everyone into the fold,” said Tenenbaum. They didn’t want to alienate the governor, and they wanted to presume good intent and foresee a need to work together. He wasn’t required to fill out a questionnaire; Tenenbaum and her team had a verbal conversation with his campaign team instead. 

“We always knew that in the end, if it was a revenue raise, he would be against it,” said Tenenbaum. But offering the endorsement and labeling Gov. Scott a “child care champion” was the right decision, Tenenbaum maintained. It created enough goodwill that Let’s Grow Kids could continue having productive conversations with his staff, many of whom were parents experiencing their own care challenges. 

“It put him on defense,” she said. Though Scott wouldn’t back any child care legislation that contained a tax increase, the team thought it was more worthwhile to endorse him in the hopes that he might later. “And it kept the door open to a conversation and kept the relationship.”

Up until 2021, Let’s Grow Kids had largely operated as a 501(c)(3)—meaning it could do some lobbying and advocacy work, but only in a very limited capacity. The rules for 501(c)(3) organizations are that lobbying cannot be a substantial part of the work, and political work is prohibited. A 501(c)(4) is allowed unrestricted lobbying and substantial political work, with fewer rules about disclosing donors and funding sources (earning them the nickname of “dark money” groups, since donors aren’t disclosed to the public).³ When was , it was incorporated as a 501(c)(4), allowing Tenenbaum and her team to do unrestricted political work.

“People would ask us why an issue like child care would need a ‘c4,’” Tenenbaum said, referring to the group’s 501(c)(4) status. “Because we need to have child care champions in the decision-making seats and you need to have the ability to elect them, support them, and hold them accountable.”

Under Tenenbaum’s leadership, Let’s Grow Kids Action Network ran two statewide political action committees, or PACs, both impacting State House races, beginning with the 2022 election.⁴ One coordinated PAC, the , allowed them to work directly with campaigns. This included everything from collaborating on a direct mail piece, knocking on doors and talking to voters, and making campaign contributions. The second PAC was for independent expenditures (IE). Activities conducted with funds from this PAC would be prohibited from coordinating with campaigns. IE PACs, sometimes called Super PACs, don’t have contribution limits; they grew in prominence following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United v. FEC decision in 2010. Communication and messaging from IE PACs are allowed to expressly advocate for or against individual candidates. 

Vermont has rules about disclosing donors above a certain threshold, and the Let’s Grow Kids Action Network maintained transparency with its PAC funding, listing donors with Vermont’s secretary of state each year, and hiring legal counsel to ensure compliance. “We needed to be Eagle Scouts when it came to compliance,” said Richards. “The last thing we needed was any sort of distraction that we were blurring the line.” 

This money was necessary if they were going to make political endorsements and then have the muscle to make an impact for candidates as they ran for reelection. “Child care couldn’t afford to be a cause that didn’t play in the ‘dark money’ arena, the way other blockbuster lobbying efforts did,” explained Jerusa Contee, who came on as managing director for Let’s Grow Kids Action Network in 2024.

Every year, going back to the year 2000 when the Permanent Fund for Vermont’s Children began, Rick Davis would organize a two-day retreat on Stave Island, a private island on Lake Champlain accessible only by boat. It was largely no-frills; Davis would borrow a friend’s porch and pack a cooler of sandwiches and drinks. The group was capped at 23 people, and they’d sit on the porch, rotating spots between the sun and the shade, discussing strategy for child care in Vermont. 

In the summer of 2021, Richards invited Lisa Klein to join them. Klein had run the Alliance for Early Success and been one of the earliest national backers of Let’s Grow Kids. But Klein had long felt that while early education had tremendous value, there still didn’t exist enough political muscle or infrastructure to sway legislators. And it was the legislators, she felt, who could create the kind of sustainable infrastructure that would really change early education outcomes. 

In 2020, Klein left the Alliance for Early Success to create a political action fund focused on early education. The Impact Fellows Action Fund is a 501(c)(4) that provides early childhood advocates across the country with political action funding at the state level. Richards knew that if Klein understood the work Let’s Grow Kids was doing, and the inroads they had already made with legislative success and a grassroots network of early child care providers, she might see Vermont as a worthwhile state to invest in. And Vermont, in turn, would have the opportunity to learn from the other states that had set up 501(c)(4)s for child care and share political and election targets. 

At Stave Island, Klein recalls being impressed by the convergence of lots of business leaders, community leaders, and funders. “The people that you would need to be in the room where it happens to make it happen” is how she described it. She offered Campriello and Richards a deal—whatever initial funds they came up with, the Impact Fellows Action Fund would match. Klein thought they’d get $75,000, but she got a call that fall saying they’d raised $200,000. 

As promised, Impact Fellows agreed to double it.

On election night, November 8, 2022, Tenenbaum pulled up to vote with her three-year-old daughter. Standing outside the polling location was a House candidate, one of their child care champions, looking freezing and exhausted and still holding a campaign sign. “Here,” Tenenbaum offered. “I will stand here with your sign while you warm up and go get dinner.” Her daughter waited with her. It was cold and dark, but Tenenbaum and her daughter were bundled up and prepared for it. 

For the previous two months, Let’s Grow Kids Action Network had been showing up in all weather to stand with their child care supporters: knocking on doors in rural counties, standing on the side of the road in freezing rain holding signs and encouraging cars to honk (“Honk as LOUD as you can, child care voters!” was the subject line of an email calling for volunteers), and attending rallies and events when bodies were needed to fill the crowd. 

They’d done a lot to show up for their preferred candidates, but was it enough to win?

In Vermont, it was. 

In 2022, the GOP gained control of the U.S. House of Representatives, but the Democrats gained a seat in the U.S. Senate and retained control. In state legislatures, Democrats saw significant gains—Vermont included. The Vermont state legislature had a of one-third of its members, and now it held a supermajority of child care champions. Of the over 130 endorsements Let’s Grow Kids Action Network had given, 117 were elected.

All of a sudden, they had all the pieces to support a child care bill with a revenue increase. If the governor decided to veto the legislation, a supermajority could override him. 

“Everything was very tight and very focused, and we didn’t get distracted,” said Tenenbaum. “We were ready to make the advocacy ask now. We cleared out the noise.”

It began almost immediately. Tenenbaum and her team went to election night parties, offering their congratulations. “It’s great that you’re a child care champion,” Tenenbaum recalls saying. 

Richards would follow up with a call, echoing that same support for the winners as child care champions. She’d ask, “What do you need from me? How can I support you?”

“What was incredible is that everyone, to a person, said, ‘Thank you for your support, I can’t wait to get into Montpelier and get this done,’” Richards said.

Let’s Grow Kids had the political apparatus and a legislature full of child care champions. They had less than two months to get to work on what a comprehensive child care bill could look like. 

Kenney and Ramos went back to their new legislators to start drafting something, with the goal of having a bill introduced at the start of the legislative session in January.

They just needed to make it happen in a matter of weeks.