Known for her decades of expertise navigating California’s unique political landscape, Gale Kaufman’s strategic guidance has led her clients through some of the State’s most significant and successful campaigns. While widely recognized for her leadership on hundreds of California State Senate and Assembly campaigns over the years, she has gained even more notoriety for her decisive victories on many prominent statewide ballot initiative campaigns that have undoubtedly changed the direction of California’s future. 

Gale Kaufman was inducted into the American Association of Political Consultants Hall of Fame, consistently appears near the top of Capitol Weekly’s annual Top 100 list, and why Campaigns & Elections Magazine named her as one of the nation’s most influential political figures in 2012.

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, that 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.

In 1992, then-Assembly Speaker Willie L. Brown, Jr. selected Kaufman to be the first woman to lead the Speaker’s Office of Majority Services. 

Kaufman has served as a political consultant to the California Teachers Association for twenty-five years. She lives in Sacramento with her husband Steve Murakami and has three sons David Kaufman, and Michael and Sean Murakami.