i want to commend the center for american women in it politics, and the eagleton institute. eagleton institute is headed by ruth van dell, who is an absolute treasure for the women's movement. but also for the united states. because they feature local and state politics, which are so often overlooked. but if we're going to do this, we have to be at all so, please, set the stage and keep us running on time. >> that's a tall order. keep us running on time. >>> ellie, i want to thank you and i want to thank alice and cathy for having me here. we were really lucky. just a couple of years ago, we brought ellie to rutgers university and we gave her an honorary degree and she was the commencement speaker. we're delighted to count ellie as an alum of rutgers university. thank you. >>> i want to just talk about the numbers of women who are in office and running for office. as ellie said, we keep track of all of these and monitor the trends for women and office. and pre-1992, we saw this slow, steady growth for women in elected office. and we used to bemoan that because we would only