PRINTA league of her own
Colleen Coble lobbies for abused and assaulted women
Truth Leem
Colleen Coble admires the queens and matriarchs in the Capitol’s stained-glass mosaic. She looks to these figures for inspiration when there aren’t bills on the floor benefiting women. Securing the rights of women in cases of domestic and sexual violence, Coble has worked for the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence for more than two decades after beginning her career in journalism and is now the CEO of the coalition.
October 9, 2008 | 12:00 a.m. CST
Media frenzy and public outcry have increased the visibility of so-called sin lobbyists who count among their clients the tobacco, alcohol and firearms industries.
In the fictional Jason Reitman film Thank You For Smoking, these lobbyists call themselves Merchants of Death. The MOD squad meets for lunch each week to squabble over who has the worst job — then decide to put the meal on another client’s tab.
Colleen Coble, the CEO of the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence, stands for ...
Colleen Coble often walks the halls where she speaks with legislators about the coalition’s stance. ...
Two blocks from the Capitol building in Jefferson City, a similar scene plays out at Madison’s Café. It seems Jefferson City can’t escape its own set of sin lobbyists.
The state Senate actually designated the chief tobacco lobbyist as a smoking area — that is, smoking is still allowed in the Capitol wherever John Britton is. But not every lobbyist in Jefferson City represents those kinds of special interests.
As she steps into an elevator to the House’s basement, Colleen Coble banters with Britton, clad in a pink shirt, blue blazer and navy blue bow tie. A lit cigarette dangles from his hand like a forgotten sixth finger, but Coble resists the urge to comment. She’ll take her smoke break outside.
For two decades, Coble’s dedication to abused and assaulted women has not wavered. Her work with the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence has transformed her from the executive director to CEO, from lobbyist to hero.
When the organization hired her in 1988, the state had 13 programs to assist survivors of abuse and assault. Missouri now has 105 such resources, in large part because of Coble’s perseverance. From earnest beginner to seasoned professional (friend and fellow lobbyist David Winton describes her as one of the state’s top experts on public safety), Coble has represented the coalition for 20 consecutive legislative sessions.
Few of the state’s more than 1,000 registered lobbyists work full time on behalf of big business, and many more commute to and from mid-Missouri only when bills pertinent to their chief issue enter debate. Still others run their own firms, representing a variety of clients, causes and interests. But Winton, who with business partner Scott Penman represents a number of nonprofit organizations, considers Coble a rarity.
It doesn’t matter how selective he and Penman are with the kind of causes their firm represents, he says. Few see them in the same altruistic light as Coble — and rightfully so.
“Colleen is this exemplary executive of a nonprofit that people see as a model for taking a disparate service and making a case to the Legislature why they should fund domestic violence shelters,” Winton explains.
The coalition began in 1980 as a grassroots campaign to unite community-based programs that protected women and children.
Penman, who met Coble in the early 1990s while working as a legislative liaison for the Reform Organization for Welfare, remains awestruck. At the time, he admired how well she knew her job. Because so many abused women qualify for public assistance, Coble felt she should know the intricacies of welfare reform legislation.
“Colleen is well-respected because she is so good at her job,” Penman says. “She has worked at every level of the domestic violence world.”
“It changes how you see the world”
Coble, a St. Louis native who graduated from the Missouri School of Journalism in 1982, says her MU education prepared her for just about everything, except industry cuts that left her without a job in 1983 after the Port Angeles Daily News downsized. She started working as a waitress in Washington state and began volunteering in her spare time. Her commitment to women’s issues, including domestic violence, sexual assault, child abuse and sex offenders, quickly became a full-time job.
“I didn’t understand until I got into advocacy work that my journalism education would transfer,” Coble says. “You’re still in the role of gathering information for those who don’t have access and need it.” But after three intense years in Port Angeles, Coble burned out. She was just one of two main staff members trying to coordinate safe homes, shelters and services in the area.
“I’d been on call 24 hours a day for three years,” Coble says. “I was in a support group meeting, and people were telling their stories, their incredible stories, and I started thinking about what I needed at the grocery store.”
The incident served as a wake-up call for Coble, who resigned the next day. She took a job in Cocoa Beach at Florida Today. During her first week, her editor sent Coble to interview a victim’s family, effectively ending her tenure at the paper that would soon become an affiliate of USA Today.
“I was the annoying news reporter,” Coble says. “I knew what they needed as an advocate, but it wasn’t my role.”
An expressive woman who often talks with her hands, Coble interrupts herself to draw a rough outline of the United States with her finger. She purposely taps one corner of the map, then the opposite: Washington in the Northwest, and Florida in the Southeast. She tells how when she arrived in Florida, she met a friend of a friend for coffee. Coble asked the woman what brought her to Florida. She said she had to move.
“Why?” Coble asked, the woman’s choice of phrasing a red flag.
“Someone broke into my house.”
“Were you home at the time?”
“Yes.”
“Did he hurt you?”
More than 20 years later, Coble ends the story with a nod in the affirmative.
“I’m always going to notice,” she says. “It’s so clear to me now. I could change where I was on the map, but I was never going to see violence against women the same way again. Encountering it changes how you see the world.”
“It wasn’t anything out of the context of our lives
”In the space of a few short years, Marilyn Coble watched her daughter graduate with a degree in journalism, lose her job and start her life’s work. When Colleen announced she was coming home to do outreach in nine rural mid-Missouri counties, Marilyn was not surprised.
“We’re a Christian family, and we have always helped other people,” Marilyn Coble says. “It wasn’t anything out of the context of our lives that she would go into something to help people.”
It was the mid-1980s. Even The Shelter, a notable Columbia institution today, did not have its own 800 number. Battered women in mid-Missouri couldn’t ask for help without fear the call would show up on their long-distance bill. Coble’s efforts formed the nucleus of what would become full-service programs in many of those counties.
When she first joined the coalition in December 1988, she had no formal training as a lobbyist. Her superiors cleaned out an efficiency apartment, where the ceiling had fallen in, from the Jefferson City Rape and Crisis Abuse Service, so she could have an office and told her to prepare for the start of the legislative session in January. Coble knew just two things when she walked into the Capitol that first day. A political science internship had given her rudimentary understanding of the legislative process — and taught her where to find the Capitol’s bathrooms.
Longtime Senator Roger Wilson made sure she learned a third lesson. Every lobbyist should explain his or her position in three points. Cover those three points in three minutes, and keep any accompanying literature to less than three pages. Coble cringes when she recalls her early position papers, some of which spanned more than 20 pages.
“It’s everyone’s issue”
But that was two decades ago. It’s April 15, 2008, and Coble strides confidently through the Capitol on 4-inch red stilettos. She doesn’t dye her hair, which cascades in wiry silver ringlets to her mid-back.
When she testifies at committee hearings, her frank descriptions of rape and domestic violence induce visceral reactions. Instead of going to senators for advice, senators come to her. Term limits ensure turnover every eight years, and new legislators often rely on Coble and other longtime lobbyists to go through history to explain why a certain law works a certain way.
In a typical day, she’ll make countless laps around the building, tracking down the legislators, staffs and sponsors she needs on the coalition’s side. Her language is telling because she can plan the unplanned. She places a high value on the chance meetings. Today, she catches the chief of staff for the president of the Senate to discuss an important piece of legislation.
Two committee hearings demand her attention. One involves public safety; the other is an omnibus judiciary hearing. She decides to prioritize the latter because it might contain several key bills pertinent to domestic violence funding. She says she already testified against two bills similar to House Bill 1795, which would create the crime of endangering the welfare of an unborn child and allow healthcare providers to report suspected drug use by pregnant women.
But then a passing senator offers Coble an important tip. Her bills aren’t likely to come up in the judiciary hearing, so she switches gears.
“Nothing in a day is written in stone,” says Coble, having spent most of the morning waiting for debate to start on H.B. 1831, which would make coerced abortion illegal in the state.
The coalition opposes the bill because it redefines woman as a female of any age, and Coble says the bill could criminalize the parent who seeks an abortion for a minor who is a victim of rape. Because the bill allows law-enforcement agencies to assume coercion, she worries it will legally remove a woman’s right to consent.
She says support and opposition for H.B. 1831 fall cleanly on gender and party lines though the coalition always operates as a nonpartisan group.
“Battered women and rape victims are not helped on party lines,” she says. “No one is asked if they’re Democrat or Republican when they come into shelters. It’s everyone’s issue.”
“Who’s going to help me?”
With noon adjournment approaching as debate on another bill drags on, Coble heads for the basement to pick up a copy of H.B. 1795. The coalition opposes this bill, too, though it shares the public-policy goal of curbing drug use among pregnant women.
In the beginning, the coalition’s legislative agenda would consist of a single issue each session, but Coble says her focus has shifted away from “please pass this one bill.” Now, she looks for gaps that might leave the women she serves unprotected.
As Rep. Darrell Pollock (R-District 146) begins explaining H.B. 1795, Coble intently writes two words in her notes: unintended consequences. Pollock notes Missouri is one of seven states that gives pregnant women priority placement in drug-treatment programs but not among 16 states that consider drug abuse among pregnant women child abuse.
Coble sees the issue differently. These aren’t pregnant women who begin using but users who become pregnant and want to stop.
“These are women who are saying: ‘I’m pregnant, I’ve been using, who’s going to help me?’” she says. “This would say: ‘No one’s going to help you. You’re in trouble.’”
Everyone who testifies in a legislative hearing has to fill out a witness form, and Coble expertly fits the long name of her organization — the Missouri Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence — into the small space on the sheet.
Another lobbyist, who opposes H.B. 1795, testifies first. She questions whether drug-addicted pregnant women would continue to seek treatment if they knew medical practitioners would have to report back to local law-enforcement agencies.
When Rep. Bruce Darrough (D-District 75) suggests striking the section that requires reporting, Coble immediately whispers “no” under her breath. The lobbyist looks back at Coble, who shakes her head.
Coble testifies briefly. Her comments are direct and to the point. The committee doesn’t ask questions. She says serving as an effective witness is as much about what she doesn’t say as what she does, and she knows when she’s said enough.
Despite a stream of witnesses for the opposition, most committee members still seem to agree with Pollock. But Rep. Jamilah Nasheed (D-District 60) speaks vehemently in favor of Coble’s position. She discusses her cousin, who successfully completed drug treatment 15 years ago to raise an honor student.
“We believe the solution to every criminal problem is locking them up,” Nasheed says. “This isn’t a crime, though. This is an illness.”
Coble just smiles as she nods. In the hall after the hearing, she thanks Nasheed for her comments. Although it depends on the issue, Coble can often count on the representative for support of the coalition’s position. But the “side” constantly shifts.
No clear lines divide the lobbyists. Besides the coalition, the ACLU, Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice Missouri testify in opposition to H.B. 1795. Earlier in the session, a lobbyist from the Catholic Conference testified against a similar bill. The traditionally pro-life organization joined with several pro-choice groups because it felt the legislation could potentially increase the number of abortions in the state.
“Finding ways to get to yes”
Coble steps outside and pulls a pack of Vantage cigarettes from a narrow pink coin purse. Lobbyists once used cigarettes as a measure of time. “Just smoke a cigarette with me,” Coble would say. It’s become a less effective method of entrapment since the smoking ban, but she still has a few takers.
In April, warm weather draws people outside. ACLU lobbyist John Coffman punches her lightly in the arm. It’s a week after the local election, and he wants to arrange a meeting with the newest member of the City Council.
Coble served the First Ward of the Columbia City Council for six years, from 1993-1999. “How I spent my 30s,” she jokes. She references an Italian filmmaker known for blurring the line between fantasy and reality. “It was like a Fellini film every Monday night.”
Her father spent a number of years on the school board when she was growing up, but Coble found the City Council a different kind of public service than her advocacy work.
“I didn’t anticipate how much I would dislike saying ‘no,’” she says. “‘No, we don’t have the money. No, we have to grant that zoning.’ I’m more comfortable on the other side, finding ways to get to yes. I was used to advocacy, and suddenly I was saying ‘no, no, no’ to people who had real needs.”
But she nods to Coffman, feeling obligated to Columbia’s First Ward.
A representative also stops to talk. He complains about how he’s lost money in the stock market this year, and he can’t justify the new home he and his wife want.
Coble asks how he’ll vote on H.B. 1831. He shrugs. He’ll vote against it, but he figures he’ll be in the minority. “It’ll probably be 30 to 130,” he says.
Coble disagrees. She knows the chance of the bill passing is exceedingly unlikely. It hasn’t gone before lawyers, she says. It’s poorly drafted. The representative nods sympathetically. All the more likely the courts will eventually throw it out.
They stand in silence for a moment, then Coble laughs. She should care more about the market, she says. She should start planning for retirement.
“She has a knack for challenging folks to be better”
Back inside the Capitol, Coble points to the closing elevator doors. She has successfully avoided an awkward ride with Rep. Robert Onder (R-District 13), the sponsor of the coerced abortion bill. She’ll keep an eye on him for the rest of the afternoon. As long as he’s outside the chamber, his bill isn’t on the floor.
Emily van Schenkhof, another member of the coalition, meets with Coble at the Capitol to clarify a few points for an upcoming legal presentation. Coble tries to give her colleague her full attention, but she keeps excusing herself to check the floor for H.B. 1831.
Her job at the coalition represents a careful balancing act. Not only must she keep up with every bill that catches its interest, but she must also keep up with the coalition itself.
The respect others have for her is clear. Van Schenkhof admits that many members of the coalition wanted to work there because of Coble.
Cheryl Robb-Welch, chief operating officer for the coalition, agrees. Robb-Welch began working at the coalition six years ago, but she sat on the board of directors before that.
“She still remains inspirational if that’s possible,” Robb-Welch says. “You think after working with someone for a while, they would no longer surprise you or challenge the way you think about things. She has a knack for challenging folks to be better without getting in their faces.”
Most recently, Coble issued that challenge in Slovakia in late September, when Women Against Violence Europe held their annual conference. Speaking on behalf of the National Network to End Domestic Violence, she discussed the future of services for survivors of domestic violence. European countries might seem like a far cry from mid-Missouri, but Coble knows a few things about reaching out to underserved communities. It’s what her work with the coalition has been about from the beginning.
Coble, currently the coalition’s senior member, works continuously toward her vision of what could be — be it at the local, state, national or global level. Her life’s work is protecting survivors, and she considers it a privilege to have known her life’s calling for as long as she has. She draws a clear distinction. Helping these women isn’t one thing she’s meant to do — it’s the thing.
“A very hard situation to describe in three minutes”
Too often bills seem reasonable, even beneficial, to the coalition’s cause. But too often legislators overlook concerns Coble’s trained eyes find immediately.
Take H.B. 1561. The bill, a response to a number of child homicide cases in which family members allowed escalating abuse that resulted in death, would require household members to report child abuse. The coalition wants the bill amended to provide exceptions for women who are victims of the same abuser.
Another bill raises fees on the services that deputy sheriffs provide, such as subpoenas, to ensure they receive pay for additional demands on their time. But these individuals also serve orders of protection, and Coble wants to see the bill amended to ensure the state doesn’t extend costs to survivors because it’s currently against the law.
Although Coble’s work seems honorable, a broader legislative agenda has created new challenges. Who would oppose someone so dedicated to serving victims of abuse and assault? “You’d be surprised,” Winton says.
H.B. 1395, an immigration bill that would require city employees to report the status of any illegal aliens they encounter, falls into the broad category of issues Coble represents.
The bill runs counter to a federal program that provides funds for victim advocates within law-enforcement agencies, and she worries some immigrant women in violent homes would no longer call police for fear of getting deported.
“It’s a very hard situation to describe in three minutes to those very concerned that there are people here in violation of immigration laws,” Coble says. Even if she cannot change opinions, she believes it is important that the coalition goes on record in opposition of such political maneuvering. She considers H.B. 1831 particularly challenging. Many legislators hear abortion and take an automatic position, she says.
“Just like lunch and recess”
Lobbyists and legislators clash for any number of reasons, but Coble scored a victory last year when the Legislature agreed to allocate state money for sexual assault forensic exams.
“Prior to that, rape victims were the only crime victims who had to pay for their own evidence collection,” Coble says. “If your house gets broken into, you don’t have to pay to dust for fingerprints, but with the rape victim, a medical examination is required.”
After the Legislature approved the bill, Coble and the coalition drafted a plan that would transfer money from a public safety fund to sustain the evidence collection bill.
Federal monies already provided for crime victim compensation and the manipulation of funds would free what the appropriations committee had already allotted for evidence collection for other various uses.
In February, Gov. Matt Blunt issued an executive order to acknowledge the coalition’s proposal. The state also returned the original $1 million allocated to evidence collection to the coalition, creating Missouri’s first state-funded grant program to provide rape crisis intervention. Despite the governor’s support, the Senate cut all of the money for rape crisis centers in May.
When Coble’s mother read in a press release that her daughter had spearheaded the transfer of funds, she beamed. The entire family is proud of Colleen, says Marilyn. But it was Colleen’s brother, Bob Coble, who once told his sister she was his hero.
Marilyn Coble describes her daughter’s sense of humor as out of this world but says the serious nature of her daughter’s work sometimes keeps it from shining through.
It’s not entirely absent from Colleen Coble’s life at the Capitol, however. As she wraps up her meeting with van Schenkhof, a buzzer rings in the background. Coble smiles slightly at the call to session. Earlier, she says, a young girl told her dad the bell was “just like lunch and recess.”
“How ironic,” Coble says. She often takes friends and coworkers on the Colleen Coble Tour of the Capitol. She points to artwork in the rotunda. A native man with a beautiful orange blanket greets a settler, but in the next panel the settler wears the blanket.
Although she would like to watch the debate on H.B. 1831 from the gallery, several legislators also opposing the bill asked her to wait outside so they can ask questions before they speak. Coble has agreed, but she mentions the stained-glass windows that rim the house ceiling. Most of the light that reaches the House floor comes in through these panels, depicting women. Essentially, Coble says, these women, queens and proud matriarchs, are illuminating the session.
“When things are happening on the floor that don’t necessarily benefit the lives and needs of women, I can at least be inspired,” she says.
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