Liuba Grechen Shirley was having one of those days. Her two-year-old son, Nicholas, had broken his leg the week before. The Democratic candidate for New York’s Second Congressional District had spent the day at the pediatrician’s office with Nicholas, along with her four-year-old daughter, Mila. “They were both crying and a mess…I was juggling everything,” Grechen Shirley recalled.

After returning home for a nap and dropping off her children with her mother, Grechen Shirley returned to her office for call time with prospective donors when her phone rang.

It was Elizabeth Warren.

“It was a complete surprise,” Grechen Shirley, who endorsed Warren’s presidential campaign in July, told Teen Vogue. “We were just talking politics and I started to cry and I said, ‘Actually this is what’s really going on in my life’…She gave me a really great pep talk and it was that talk that I needed in that moment…Those are the conversations that take running for office from abstract goal to reality.”

Grechen Shirley lost her race to 13-term incumbent Republican Peter King in the 2018 midterms. But her greatest victory, as Warren herself pointed out, was becoming the first woman to successfully petition the Federal Elections Committee (FEC) to use federal funds for childcare. Since her election loss, Grechen Shirley went on to found Vote Mama, a political action committee (PAC) dedicated to supporting mothers running for office, where she serves as CEO. Now, Grechen Shirley is among the women who’ve run for office across the country who are lending their support to Warren’s presidential bid, offering insight into how the senator’s brand of personal politics has shaped her campaign and, potentially, the future of the Democratic Party.

Warren’s own fairly smooth road to reelection last year allowed her to devote her time, staff, and sizable monetary resources to cultivate a base of national support among other Democrats running for office — many of them women.

“She is so intentional about relationships,” a senior adviser in the Massachusetts congressional delegation told Teen Vogue. “They’ve really built an organization in a very interesting way. And that is definitely a credit to the senator…as well as her senior team.”

Where other candidates may, out of necessity, have spent large sums on television-ad buys, Warren’s reelection campaign didn’t run any TV ads in her deep-blue state, and she still won her race with more than 60% of the vote. As Politico reported in December, Warren raised or donated $11 million to and for various Democrats during the last midterm cycle. While women were not the exclusive beneficiaries of Warren’s midterm efforts, her operation took a particular interest in female candidates. According to FEC filings obtained by Teen Vogue, 68% of the federal candidates Warren’s campaign donated to during the 2017–2018 cycle were women, and each candidate committee received the maximum $2,000 donation allowed by the commission. That focus on gender equality has followed her into the 2020 race. In August, Politico reported that Warren’s senior staff for her presidential campaign, a majority of whom are women, are all paid the same annual salary.

In a statement to Teen Vogue, Warren’s presidential campaign confirmed that she supported a total of 99 women up and down the ballot during the 2018 elections and recorded “over 25” videos supporting women candidates, in addition to emailing her own list of supporters, endorsing candidates in the press and on social media, and offering her expertise on policy issues. “Elizabeth…is committed to helping women across the country run — and win,” the statement read in part.