Waiting for Madam President - NYTimes.com WASHINGTON - Momentum to elect more women to high office, specifically to break the ultimate glass ceiling and elect a woman as president in the United States, has gone into high gear here with Emily's List's Madam President campaign, a fund-raising drive that in just a few weeks has gained thousands of new followers and thousands of dollars in donations. Introducing the campaign with the panache and verve she is widely acknowledged as bringing to her role as president of Emily's List, Stephanie Schriock proclaimed that "Americans are ready to elect a woman to the White House. Our polling shows that 90 percent of Americans would consider voting for a woman president and 75 percent believe that a woman president would be a good thing for the country. "We're throwing everything we've got at this," she said. Key findings from a poll commissioned by Emily's List took the political pulse of 800 likely 2016 voters in nine presidential battleground states. The poll, which was done April 3-9, backs up Ms. Schriock's claims about voting for a woman. It also found that a majority of voters (51 percent) believe that women in the U.S. House and Senate are making "a positive difference" although they represent only 18 percent of the House and 20 percent of the Senate. Other research shows that the high barriers impeding female candidates are beginning to come down, said Jennifer Lawless, a professor of political science at American University in Washington. Women are now as likely to be elected as men, she said, and as likely to raise as much money as men, though it may still be harder to do so. And in a switch from what many saw as off-color slights directed by some political commentators at Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sarah Palin in 2008, women are now likely to receive the same media treatment as men. Women are no more subject to negative comments for their physical appearance, mannerisms and fashion than men are, Dr. Lawless said. It's no surprise, then, that Emily's List, one of the largest political action committees in the United States, would seize the moment and raise the Madam President banner to build a groundswell of support for a Democratic woman to win the presidency in 2016. The list begins, of course, with Mrs. Clinton, but a handful of other Democratic women are working their way up the pipeline. There's Senator Kirsten E. Gillibrand of New York; Janet Napolitano, the secretary of homeland security and former Arizona governor; and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. Someday Ms. Schriock might be on one such list herself. A veteran campaign manager credited with a couple of uphill victories - Senator Jon Tester of Montana and Senator Al Franken of Minnesota - she took over Emily's List in early 2010, when she was 36, succeeding the group's founder and central force, Ellen Malcolm, then 62. In a major generational shift, Ms. Schriock, now 40, adopted Internet technology for fund-raising, marketing and recruiting. From the end of 2010 to the end of 2012, Emily's List quintupled its membership, to more than two million from 400,000. And with the largest number of donors in its 28-year history, it raised a record-breaking $52 million in the 2011-12 electoral cycle. "Emily's List is not just an organization," Ms. Schriock said in an interview in her office in downtown Washington. It is, in fact, a movement of women - and men. Ms. Schriock has a commanding presence. On stage, she can galvanize a crowd of 1,400 women and bring them to their feet (as she did at the 2013 Emily's List Inauguration Brunch). In her office, dressed in casual-Friday jeans, her tone is softer, but she responds with the same rapid-fire staccato that, at times, can sound pretty much scripted. And now her name has been floated for a run for the U.S. Senate in 2014, when her home state of Montana will have a vacancy. "I have been overwhelmed by the interest in the Senate race," she has said repeatedly since the chatter began in early May. I am waiting to see how all this plays out. In the large shadow of Emily's List, some smaller groups are working their own strategies. Siobhan (Sam) Bennett, 55, who heads the nonpartisan Women's Campaign Fund, doubts the accuracy of reports on the growing rate of women running for office. "Progress has been marginal," she said in her Washington office. It's essentially a flat line. Not only are women holding back, she said, they also don't contribute to campaigns. Only 26 percent of political fund-raising comes from women, she said. That doesn't mean she is shrinking her own expectations. She believes she can help turn around women who are afraid of the political fray. She talks about "changing the game." Her reach, though, is limited. "We are a boutique organization," she said. The 40-year-old Women's Campaign Fund, which she has run since April 2009, after her failed bid for a U.S. House seat, operates with a $1.5 million annual budget and 49,316 due-paying members. But she doesn't see Emily's List as a threat or rival. "The problem is so big, we need all the biodiversity," she said. Karen Middleton, the head of Emerge America, a political training program with chapters in 13 states, credited Emily's List and Ms. Gillibrand's Off the Sidelines campaign with generating more interest. "More women want to run," she said by telephone from San Francisco. There's so much work to be done, we need everyone.