In 1992, because of her extensive experience in grassroots organizing and political campaign strategy, Speaker Willie L. Brown tapped Kaufman to be the first woman Director of the California State Assembly Speaker’s Office of Majority Services. While widely recognized for her leadership on over 100 candidate 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 decisive victories on prominent statewide ballot initiative campaigns.

In the last 20 years, Kaufman notably defeated three separate potentially disastrous ballot box attacks on union member’s free speech. In 2006, The American Association of Political Consultants bestowed its “National Campaign Manager of the Year” award on Kaufman for her work on the resoundingly successful 2005 campaign to defeat the four special election initiatives placed on the ballot by Governor Schwarzenegger. Most recently, Kaufman managed the victorious campaign to legalize recreational marijuana in California – by the widest margin that any similar initiative in country has received to date.

Since 1998, there hasn’t been a California electoral cycle with ballot propositions that Kaufman hasn’t played a significant role.

Gale and her husband Steve live in Sacramento, and are proud parents to their three sons.