More than 100 women gathered in Denver on Monday to watch a preview of Strong Sisters, a documentary about women in Colorado politics, and help raise money to finish the film.

“It’s about something we all should be telling our daughters and granddaughters about,” said former House Majority Leader Amy Stephens, R-Monument, introducing filmmakers Meg Froelich and Laura Hoeppner at a luncheon she organized at the Artwork Network gallery in Denver’s Art District on Santa Fe.

The filmmakers have been conducting interviews – 63 at last count – with current and former lawmakers, historians, journalists and campaign strategists in order to tell the story of trails blazed by women in Colorado. They’re planning to start editing the footage this month with an anticipated premiere before the end of the year.

“It’s about those who dare to run for office,” said Stephens, who ran for the U.S. Senate last year, adding that she used the word “dare” intentionally. “It takes a lot of oomph, a lot of courage.”

Hoeppner made a similar point.

“You have to be tough, have to be strong,” she said, adding that the filmmakers are also hearing that women legislators “bring to the table empathy, compassion, collaboration, a different way of doing business.” When Colorado elected its first women to the General Assembly, decades before women even had the right to vote nationwide, she said, “Their voices made an immediate impact.”

State voters approved women’s suffrage in 1893 – the first time any state granted women the vote by referendum – and elected three women to the Legislature the next year, making Colorado’s the first parliamentary body in the world to seat women lawmakers. And until earlier this year when state Rep. Libby Szabo, R-Arvada, resigned her seat, Colorado led the nation with the largest share of women serving in a legislature. (Vermont took the lead from Colorado by just 0.1 percent.)

Even so, Colorado is one of only 14 states never to have elected a woman as governor or U.S. senator, but Froelich said that’s going to change soon.

“When we ask the question why there’s been no female governor, senator or mayor of Denver,” she said, “the reply is, ‘It’s going to happen, it’s going to happen soon.’ There’s an overwhelming sense of optimism that we’re going to see women step up to the next level.”

One barrier, she noted, is raising money.

“What we hear over and over again is, ‘I have access to people who can write me a check for $50 or $100. I don’t have access to people who can write me a check for $2,500 or set up a soft-money fund for me,'” Froelich said. “There are very capable women who are out there who could be running for higher levels, but they are so intimidated by the amounts of money that have to be raised.”

She noted that it’s a lesson they’ve learned trying to round up the funds to produce the film. “Even though it’s the best vision in the world, you have to have money to make it happen.”

The fundraiser was sponsored by the Women’s Initiative at McKenna Long & Aldridge, where Stephens is a managing director of the law firm’s Colorado government affairs practice.

The bipartisan crowd included former Colorado first ladies Dottie Lamm and Frances Owens and former state lawmakers Maryanne “Moe” Keller, Vickie Agler, Kiki Traylor, and Karen Middleton, former State Treasurer Cary Kennedy and El Paso County Commissioner Peggy Littleton, along with activists, lobbyists and government officials from around the state.

After the luncheon, Stephens told The Colorado Statesman that when women run for office there are two key factors: “They need to have clarity about what they’re going to stand for and bring to the state, and they have to have a very good team around them.”

She ticked off a bipartisan list of women she said would make great candidates for governor, Congress or Denver mayor, including Kennedy, Littleton, Attorney General Cynthia Coffman, Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce President Kelly Brough, state Sen. Ellen Roberts, and state Reps. Polly Lawrence and Perry Buck.

“We have a lot of talented women,” she said. “We should encourage more women to run. We have all kinds of possibilities.”

Lamm, who was the Democratic nominee for the Senate in 1998 – she lost to incumbent U.S. Sen. Ben Campbell, who had switched parties three years earlier – said that she hoped women candidates weren’t facing the same kind of “subtle sexism” that she ran into.

“It tried to be subtle, but it wasn’t,” Lamm said with a shake of her head. “They’d say, ‘She’s just a former first lady, she’s just a columnist, that’s all kind of substandard, she hasn’t had the experience.’ Though a guy can come out of the private sector and have done almost anything, and, if he catches on, he can be elected.”

She noted that Froelich had pointed to a change to the landscape lately, that younger women, even women with young children, are wanting to run for office, rather than waiting until they’re in their 50s to launch political careers.

“You don’t have to wait that long to get the experience, but you have to have things that make up for it and show you are a really solid person,” Lamm said. Then she gave a determined smile and added, “We gotta keep doing it.”

Froelich and Hoeppner showed the Strong Sisters trailer at the end of March, Women’s History Month, on the floor of the Colorado House of Representatives and received a standing ovation. The screening was organized by state Rep. Faith Winter, D-Westminster, and state Sen. Linda Newell, D-Littleton, mentioned the documentary in a resolution commemorating the month. There’s a showing scheduled at 9 a.m. on May 2 at the League of Women Voters of Boulder County annual meeting at Fox Hill Country Club in Longmont.

To view the trailer and learn more about the project, visit the documentary’s website at www.strongsisters.org.

– Ernest@coloradostatesman.com