Kitty corner from the gourmet butcher on a tree-lined Los Gatos avenue, I ascended to a sufficiently opulent second-floor office past a unique display of circular lights affixed to the wall. I was greeted warmly and offered bottled water.
Then, Shannon Hunt-Scott introduced herself and ushered me into her plush office—and towards royal purple chairs where our interview would take place.
She won’t say whose bums have warmed these seats in recent days, as she and her husband, Kevin Scott, the Microsoft CTO who purchased this building a few years back, cast around for who to throw their weight behind for president in the 2028 election.
“A lot of people” have graced the purple chairs, is all she’ll reveal for now, adding they’re looking at candidates who align with their values, but also “have a real shot” at bringing home the win.
Famously, they’ve brought Jill and Joe Biden, as well as Kamala Harris, to Los Gatos in recent years for fundraisers.
On Sept. 29, the abortion rights and family planning advocacy organization Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly National Association for the Repeal of Abortion Laws) announced Shannon Hunt-Scott had been elected its new C4 Chair of its Board of Directors.
When I asked her about Harris’s time at her home in Los Gatos, Hunt-Scott brought up a story illustrating the transformational power of diversity.
I’d forgotten that Harris’s initial visit had occurred in the wake of the June 24, 2022 6-3 US Supreme Court Decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that struck down the right to an abortion, overruling both Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.
I definitely remember how sweltering it was that day as I waited to photograph Vice President Kamala Harris’s motorcade that would wind its way up through the Los Gatos hills to Hunt-Scott’s house six days later.
“I’ve known her for a while, and she knows that a huge piece of my advocacy sits in the reproductive rights space,” she said. “She is—remains—the tip of the spear on reproductive rights.”
Hunt-Scott pinged everyone in her contact list.
“Now is your moment to show up,” was her message. “It was really important to me to bring as many people that care about the issue as possible.”
(Drew Altizer)
In the end, 125 donors attended the high-ticket event, and Hunt-Scott credits the Los Gatos gathering with helping Biden outperform historical norms at the ballot box.
“The 2022 midterms could have been much worse for the Democrats,” she said. “That was really a big moment.”
But it’s a private one that sticks out to her perhaps even a little more than the broader political picture: a dear friend’s daughter, who is Black and Latina, getting to meet Kamala Harris, a powerful woman of Indian and Jamaican heritage.
“He was like, ‘It was lifechanging,’” Hunt-Scott said, recalling how her friend described the interaction between the little girl and the woman who was first-in-line to the presidency. “That’s what opportunity is supposed to be about.”
Hunt-Scott doesn’t necessarily believe that identity politics is what cost Harris the presidency and ushered in Donald Trump’s second-term reign, as was claimed by Democrats’ own assessment of the 2024 results.
She pins the failure more on poor communication about kitchen table issues.
“We didn’t do a good job of conveying, like, we want to bring down the price of groceries,” she said. “If you look at this cycle—and the trainwreck that is our current economic moment—our job moving into the midterms is that voters know that we are going to do everything in our power to remedy that.”
‘There’s no way to actually pull apart affordability from reproductive rights.’
—Shannon Hunt-Scott
As Hunt-Scott has ascended to the leadership of a major pro-abortion group, the wedge issue has decreased in prominence in the political sphere, at least for now. However, in our interview she was quick to link cost-of-living to family planning. “Nothing costs more than raising a family,” she said. “There’s no way to actually pull apart affordability from reproductive rights.”
Her tone wasn’t combative so much as dripping with optimism. “We have to build more affordable housing. We have to end the war so we can bring gas prices down,” she said. “There are opportunities to work back towards a better place for all of America.”
Given this inclusive language struck a note of outreach to the so-called flyover regions of the country and more rural portions of coastal states, I bring up a conversation I’d had, days earlier, with the mother of a friend, who used to live in Orange County.
When I’d told her I was preparing to interview the wife of a Microsoft executive who’d just been named the head of a group that’s in favor of restoring access to abortions, she bristled. As a devout Catholic who believes that life begins at conception, she’s one of many who follow a religion led by a guy from Chicago who feels at odds with the way reproductive rights are discussed in America.
And I couldn’t help but think about how much community support there was in Los Gatos for the St. Mary’s of the Immaculate Conception fundraiser last weekend. So, I looked it up and discovered that about a quarter to a third of people in this state follow that particular religion. (A 2023-24 study from the Pew Research Center found that 25% of Californians identify as Catholic, whereas the California Catholic Conference puts the share at 30%).
I’ve heard plenty of liberals and progressives bemoan how Trump has stoked divisions, and about how life was so much better when Americans were able to talk to each other. So, I asked Hunt-Scott if she’d be willing to extend an olive branch to people like my friend’s mom by, say, participating in a respectful discussion on staunchly anti-abortion Relevant Radio, the Catholic network heard in Los Gatos on AM 1200, as a way to seek helpful compromises—or at least newfound respect and understanding—with those who see things differently.
She seemed a little taken aback by the question, though perhaps I misread her reaction.
“I’d want to give it some more thought. I don’t think it’s a hard ‘No,’” she said, not exactly enthused with the idea. “There is so much work to be done in rallying our own side.”
Instead, she says, she’s been focused on what the Democrats can do once they regain the levers of power.
“Are we going to see a court vacancy on the other side of Nov. 3?” she asked, referring to a potential retirement of justices Samuel Alito or Clarence Thomas. “That, to my mind, is the top thing for folks on our side to be thinking about in the near future.”
