Stephanie Pitcher approaches legislation like a chess game — methodical, precise and several steps ahead. She passed more bills than any other Democrat in the Republican-controlled legislature this year.
In 2009, Stephanie Pitcher, then the director of the Utah State Women’s Chess Tournament, told The Salt Lake Tribune that she’d spent much of her chess career trying to avoid being boxed in.
Already a five-time chess champion at age 22, Pitcher said she’d taken a break from playing chess for three years during middle school because she “didn’t want to be seen as the nerd.” The game was full of stereotypes, she added, like “chess is nerdy” and “chess is a boys’ game.” She hoped that women would resist those labels.
Now, 16 years and three more chess championships later, Pitcher is a senator representing parts of Salt Lake County, and though she no longer plays much competitive chess, the game has informed her work as one of Utah’s few Democratic lawmakers — and the most successful Democrat during the 2025 legislative session.
This year, she passed 14 bills, more than any other Democrat in the Legislature, and more than all but four Republicans in either chamber. It was a remarkably successful run for a minority party member, which she attributes to her first-hand experience as a prosecutor and defense attorney and her openness to working across the aisle.
“It’s kind of funny,” said Ogden Republican Rep. Ryan Wilcox, who frequently cosponsors legislation with Pitcher. “She runs a lot of small bills, but she’s done her homework enough on them that I can see where she’s going. I can see the end game. It is several steps ahead. It’s exactly like chess with Stephanie.”
‘I don’t run legislation I can’t win’
A week after the 2025 legislative session ended, on a snowy March afternoon, Pitcher and I sat down in her office at the Capitol to play chessand discuss the recent session. The walls of her office were mostly bare — the decor limited largely to a giant chess pawn, a paper sculpture handcrafted by her daughter and a dying cactus — but she was quick to produce a big bag of chess gear.
Pitcher heads up the Capitol Chess Club with Rep. Nelson Abbott, R-Orem, who has the distinction of being the only lawmaker in the state to have beaten Pitcher in a game. He beat her online, she said, after she had gotten “a little cocky.”
“People like to challenge me, of course, so I told [my colleagues] that if they beat me, I would go to conservative caucus,” she said with a smile. Now, she owes them a visit.
“It’s actually worse that they meet at 7 a.m. than the fact that it’s the conservative caucus,” the Senate Democrat said. “That’s just a horrible time for me.”
Republicans make up the majority of Pitcher’s colleagues.
In both the Utah House and Senate, the GOP holds supermajorities and controls the powerful Rules Committees — meaning not only do Republicans not need a single vote from Democrats to pass any given piece of legislation during the 45-day session, but Republicans in each Rules Committee could, theoretically, also prevent any Democrat-sponsored bill from ever getting a vote.
“We all approach our job differently,” Pitcher said. “Generally speaking… I don’t run legislation that I can’t win. I’m never going to win on reproductive rights up here. I’m never going to win on gun control. And so I just decided I’m going to focus on areas where there’s actually an opportunity to improve policy in that space.”
‘My role is to pass good legislation‘
Pitcher attributes some of her success to a numbers game: “There’s definitely benefit to being in the Senate just from the standpoint of there’s fewer of us,” she said.
But a lot of it requires quick and constant strategic thinking. She plans, she explained, where she can compromise and where she can’t, considers how much her bills will — or, more importantly, won’t — cost and assesses how to most effectively present her ideas to her colleagues on the other side of the aisle.
And she hasn’t shied away from sponsoring bills with Republicans who also run legislation she votes against, including Rep. Jordan Teuscher, who sponsored what was likely the session’s most controversial bill — a ban on collective bargaining for public employees — and Reps. Nicholeen Peck and Stephanie Gricius, who have both been the subject of ire from LGBTQ+ groups.
Teuscher, Peck and Gricius did not respond to interview requests for this story.
Part of her reasoning for building such unlikely coalitions, Pitcher said, is principled. “I see the opportunity to work on a bill with one of my colleagues as the opportunity to build a relationship with them and get to know them better and to invest in each other’s ideas,” she said.
And while she hopes colleagues on both sides of the aisle will support her policy work, Pitcher said she doesn’t see the collaborations as an effort to build the left wing in the state.
“Maybe this isn’t the popular thing to say, but I just don’t see it as my role to increase the Democratic makeup of the state of Utah,” she said. “I’m here to pass good legislation on behalf of the people that I represent, and I happen to be a Democrat, but I’m not the flag bearer for the Democratic Party. We have a party for that, and a party chair for that and elected party officials for that role. My role is to pass good legislation.”
Wilcox, who is among Pitcher’s frequent GOP collaborators, said in a recent interview that he was indeed initially skeptical of her. He originally served in the Legislature from 2009 through 2014, and then returned in 2021, when he became the chair of the House Law Enforcement and Criminal Justice committee. Wilcox took on the role a year after Pitcher successfully passed bail reform legislation aimed at focusing the state on risk, rather than ability to pay, when setting bail.
In his new role as chair, Wilcox said he had been hearing frequent complaints from law enforcement officials about bail reform. “My initial take on the whole thing,” he said, “was she was just a hard-left-wing person, and that’s why she was pushing this stuff.”
Pitcher’s bail reform law was repealed in 2021, and a compromise bill emerged from a special session later that year. Several months later, as lawmakers considered a DNA collection bill, Wilcox and Pitcher found themselves sharing similar concerns, Wilcox said.
“It was just fun,” he remembered. “It was fun to realize that, even as a prosecutor, she wasn’t locked into her in-the-box ideology.”
Wilcox began to see then, he said, that Pitcher was not as he first imagined.
“She’s crazy smart,” Wilcox said. “On the strategic side, on the legislative side — that’s why it’s fun. That’s why I enjoy working with Stephanie, because she understands it’s not about a temporary win.”
Rep. Anthony Loubet, R-Kearns, with whom Pitcher has also cosponsored legislation, shared a similar assessment.
“She’s a great person to work with,” he said. “She obviously has Democrat political views and is able to represent those, but she also understands the legal and the political landscape, so she does a good job of building up relationships and finding common ground.”
And Juliette Osguthorpe, who worked as a staffer for Wilcox during the recent session, said Pitcher’s success made her a topic of conversation among one of the Capitol’s most observant and most frequently overlooked groups: the interns.
“We were talking about kind of the two Democratic strategies in a majority red state,” she said of the interns. “You can either go the route of, ‘My job is to kind of antagonize and make everyone else look bad and force Republicans to respond to all these issues,’ or you can take the route Senator Pitcher has adopted, work on policy and focus on policy and do what you can to make a difference.”
“I think obviously one of those is more effective on the legislative scale,” Osguthorpe added, “and I think you see that with Senator Pitcher.”
‘Knowing where you’re going is the first step’
Asked about Wilcox’s assessment that she makes policy the way she plays chess, Pitcher said she felt he was giving her too much credit. “I want to be part of making good policy, impactful policy,” she said. “I think everything I did run this year, none of it was system shifting… but it is really good policy.”
Her ultimate goal, she said, is to “be able to run hard things.”
Another favorite bill from the recent session, she said, was SB194, which she cosponsored with Republican Rep. Tyler Clancy, who serves as a Provo police officer when he’s not at the Capitol. The legislation allows for inmates in county jails to have better access to evidence in their own cases, an idea born between sessions when Pitcher was trying to visit a client in the Utah County Jail and ended up having to play a video from her laptop through a mail slot for her client.
It was the sort of legislation that has become her specialty: nonpartisan and inexpensive, with a practical fix. It passed both chambers without garnering a single vote against and was signed into law by the governor last month — as was every other bill Pitcher shepherded through the Legislature in 2025.
In her office, after we’d talked for an hour about the recent legislative session, Pitcher set up a board and taught me a lesson: how to checkmate an opponent with two rooks.
“The goal is to find the edge of the board that the king is closest to and where it makes sense for your pieces to start pushing him in that direction,” she explained. “Knowing where you’re going is the first step.”
But I never even had the chance to try using it against her. Later, when we played a game, I exposed my queen early, and she beat me immediately. She knew where she was going all along.
The 19th News(letter)
News that represents you, in your inbox every weekday.
INFORM YOURSELF ABOUT THE ISSUES!
INSPIRE YOURSELF TO BE AN ACTIVE CITIZEN
AND PROTECTOR OF OUR DEMOCRACY!
For more stories of remarkable women, see HERSTORY on womensvoicesmedia.org
In the first few months of this year two identical historical events occurred in two cities in the U.S.
Early this year the metropolis of St. Paul, MN, swore in an all-female city council. The first in the city's history.
The three returning councilmembers: Councilmember Rebecca Noecker, Ward 2, begins her third term; Councilmember Mitra Jalali, Ward 4, begins her third term; and Councilmember Nelsie Yang, Ward 6, begins her second term.
The four newly elected councilmembers include: Anika Bowie, Ward 1; Saura Jost, Ward 3; Hwa Jeong Kim, Ward 5; and Cheniqua Johnson, Ward 7.
Additionally significant - the majority of the council members are women of color, and all are younger than the age of 40.
In the picturesque little city on the Gulfcoast of Florida, Gulfport elected an all-female, five member city council and a female mayor.
On April 1, Gulfport swore in Mayor Karen Love, Ward 2 council member Marlene Shaw and Ward 4 council member Nancy Earley.
They joined reelected council members April Thanos and Cosi Jackson to complete the city’s first all-female City Council — and one of the few, if any, in the state.
According to a recent report from the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, nearly 34% of municipal officers in Florida are women, compared to the national average of 32%. Florida ranks 18th nationally with 34% female representation in local government.
“There is just not enough data out there,” said Jean Sinzdak, associate director of the center, explaining the difficulty of tracking leadership compositions across all municipalities nationwide.
“It’s hard to tell where Gulfport stands on a statewide or national level, as far as an all-female government,” Sinzdak said. “But it is rare and quite an accomplishment for the city.”
All-female councils remain uncommon but not unprecedented in American history. In 1888, Oskaloosa, Kansas, became the first town in the United States known to have an all-woman government, with Mayor Mary Lowman leading the council.
As we are winding down this year's celebration of Women's History Month, we think it is especially appropriate that we honor the accomplishments of the woman we should have as President - former Vice President Kamala Harris.
There are those who believe that she is "the one" who had the Presidency stolen from her. While that is within the realm of possibility, we must leave the determination of that to others. Our purpose here is to honor her and all her considerable accomplishments.
To say she is more principled, more educated, and more experienced than the current occupant of the White House is the understatement of the century. Further it can be said, her qualifications are equal to or surpass those of any man who has ever sat in the Oval Office.
She was born October 20, 1964, in Oakland California, to Shyamala Gopalan Harris and Donald J. Harris. Both of her parents were well-educated and accomplished. Her mother was a breast cancer scientist and pioneer in her own right who came to the United States from India at the age of 19 and then received her doctorate the same year that Kamala was born.
Both of the Vice President’s parents were active in the civil rights movement and instilled in her a commitment to build strong coalitions that fight for the rights and freedoms of all people. They brought her to civil rights marches in a stroller and taught her about heroes like Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and civil rights leader Constance Baker Motley.
Vice President Harris went on to graduate from Howard University and the University of California Hastings College of Law. In 2014, she married Douglas Emhoff, a lawyer. They have a large blended family that includes their children, Ella and Cole.
Harris began her legal and political career as a courtroom prosecutor in Oakland standing up for women and children against predators who abused them, in 2004, Vice President Harris was elected District Attorney of San Francisco. There she was a national leader in the movement for LGBTQ+ rights, officiating some of the first same-sex weddings. She also established the office’s environmental justice unit and created a ground-breaking program to provide first-time drug offenders with the opportunity to earn a high school degree and find employment, which the U.S. Department of Justice designated as a national model of innovation for law enforcement.
In 2010, Vice President Harris was elected Attorney General of California where she oversaw the largest state justice department in the country. She took on those who were preying on the American people, winning a $20 billion settlement for Californians whose homes had been foreclosed on and a $1.1 billion settlement for students and veterans who were taken advantage of by a for-profit education company. As Attorney General she cracked down on the transnational gangs that smuggled drugs, guns and people across the U.S.-Mexico border. She also defended the Affordable Care Act in court and enforced laws to protect public health and the environment.
In 2017, she was sworn into the United States Senate where she championed legislation to fight hunger, provide rent relief, improve maternal health care, expand access to capital for small businesses, revitalize America’s infrastructure, and combat the climate crisis. She questioned two Supreme Court nominees while serving on the Judiciary Committee. She also worked to keep the American people safe from foreign threats and crafted bipartisan legislation to assist in securing American elections while serving on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
On January 20, 2021, Kamala Harris was sworn in as the 49th Vice President of the United States — the first woman, the first Black American, and the first South Asian American to be elected to this position.
The Biden-Harris administration delivered monumental achievements that are life-changing for millions of Americans. The President and Vice President were focused on investing in economic opportunity resulting in a record 21 million new small business applications, created a record 16 million jobs, lowered the unemployment rate to the lowest average in 50 years, capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors, cut prescription drug prices, and improved maternal health by expanding postpartum care through Medicaid. They passed the largest investment in a generation to upgrade the nation’s water, transportation, and internet infrastructure and the Vice President cast the tie-breaking vote on the largest investment ever to tackle the climate crisis.
.On July 21, 2024, Vice President Harris announced her campaign for president after President Joe Biden withdrew his bid for reelection. She officially became the party’s nominee on August 5 after a formal roll call vote of DNC delegates and made history again as the first Black woman and first South Asian woman nominated for president by a major U.S. political party.
Unfortunately her campaign was not successful. Her vision of ensuring all Americans can climb the ladder of economic opportunity, including by bringing down the cost of living and making housing more affordable will not become a reality.
As a trailblazer throughout her entire career, the Vice President has been committed to fulfilling her mother’s advice: “Kamala, you may be the first to do many things, but make sure you are not the last.”
NOTE: Biographical information in this post is from the Kamala Harris website: https://kamalaharris.com/
Widely known for being the first African American woman to serve in a presidential cabinet, Roberts Harris was President Jimmy Carter’s U.S. Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development from 1977 to 1979 and as Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services from 1979 to 1981.
She accomplished a number of other firsts in her illustrious career. Prior to serving in the cabinet, President Lyndon Johnson appointed her the ambassador to Luxembourg in 1965, making Roberts Harris the first African American woman to be an ambassador. She was also a pioneer in business, becoming the first African American woman to serve on a corporate board of a Fortune 500 company: IBM.
In addition, there were her notable accomplishments in academia: Roberts Harris was the first African American to be a dean of a U.S. law school when she took on the role at Howard in 1969.
However, she also broke new ground at Howard by leaving a legacy – the Patricia Roberts Harris Fellowship for Public and International Affairs – which makes it possible for Howard students to follow in her footsteps in living a life of public service.
Patricia Roberts was born May 31, 1924, in Mattoon, Illinois, the daughter of railroad dining car waiter Bert Fitzgerald Roberts and Hildren Brodie. She had one younger brother, Malcolm. Her parents separated when she was 6 years old, after which she was raised primarily by her mother and grandmother, attending public school in Chicago.
While Roberts earned scholarships to five different colleges, she elected to attend Howard University, from which she graduated, summa cum laude, in 1945. While at Howard, she was elected Phi Beta Kappa and served as Vice Chairman of the Howard University chapter of the NAACP. In 1943, she participated in one of the nation's first lunch counter sit-ins.
She did graduate work in industrial relations at the University of Chicago from 1946 to 1949. In order to be better involved in civil rights work, she transferred to American University in 1949, where she would ultimately receive her Master's Degree.
Harris met William Beasley Harris, then a member of the Howard law faculty and later a federal Maritime Commission administrative judge. They began dating in 1955, and were married on September 1, 1955. It was William who encouraged her to go to law school and in 1960 she received her J.D. from the George Washington University National Law Center, ranking number one out of a class of ninety-four students. She passed the bar exam the same year.
Her first position with the U.S. government was in 1960 as an attorney in the appeals and research section of the criminal division of the U.S. Department of Justice. There she met and struck up a friendship with Robert F. Kennedy, the new attorney general.
One year later, Harris took a job as a lecturer and the Associate Dean of Students at Howard University. In 1963, she left her role as Dean, but stayed on as a lecturer. Concurrently, from 1962–65, she worked with the National Capital Area Civil Liberties Union. As her skills as an organizer bloomed, Harris also became increasingly involved in the Democratic Party.
In 1963, she was elevated to a full professorship at Howard, and President John F. Kennedy appointed her co-chairman of the National Women's Committee for Civil Rights, described as an "umbrella organization encompassing some 100 women's groups throughout the nation." Her co-chair was Mildred McAfee Horton.
In 1971, Harris was named to the board of directors of IBM, becoming the first Black American woman to sit on a Fortune 500 company's board of directors. In addition, she served on the boards of Scott Paper, the National Bank of Washington, and Chase Manhattan Bank.
On January 27, 2000, the United States Postal Service's released its 23rd commemorative stamp in its Black Heritage Series, honoring Harris. The stamp was designed by Richard Sheaff of Scottsdale, Arizona, and 150 million copies were produced in recognition of Black History Month. Additionally, in 2003, Harris was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
Helen A. Cook was a leader for African American women's clubs and an advocate for universal suffrage and education. Cook attended the first convention for universal suffrage in Washington, DC, but was a critic of Susan B. Anthony's lack of support for Black men's suffrage.
She was president of the Colored Women's League and a co-founder of the National Association of Colored Women in 1896.
Georgia Douglas Johnson (1877-1966)
Johnson was a poet, playwright, muscian, teacher, and part of the Harlem Renaissance. She protested racial inequities and lynching through her poetry and plays.
Her S Street home in Washington, DC, was a gathering place for African American writers and intellectuals for more than forty years.
Johnson's work, published in "The Crisis" was said to have influenced Maya Angelou.
Patricia Harris (1924-1985)
Harris, a lawyer, educator, and public servant, broke many barriers for African American women.
She was the first to be a U.S. Ambassador; first to be a member of the President's Cabinet as Secretary of Housing and Urban Developement; and the first member of the board of a Fortune 500 company - IBM.
