1992 Ad

Like millions of others across the country, two Denver women decided in September to actively support a presidential candidate for the first time. Unlike many others, they announced their arrival in a big way.

In a two-page letter that never mentioned the names Bill Clinton or Al Gore, these prominent Denver philanthropists declared their intent to raise a million dollars for the ticket in one day.

Swanee Hunt and Merle Chambers, co-chairs of "A Million Dollar Day," had already sweetened the pot. Hunt contributed $225,000 to the Democratic National Committee (DNC), while Chambers wrote her check for $208,000 and then secured another $79,000 from her mother, Evelyn. Backed by the DNC, Hunt and Chambers asked others simply to give $1,000 of their own - or to raise a cool grand from others.

"There's this empowerment of being in a circle of women doing wonderful things," Clinton-Gore/Colorado spoke-sperson Carol Boigan said at the time.

In fact, the largely untold story of this so-called "year of the woman" in politics is the increasingly visible - and effective - role women are playing on the fundraising side of the electoral equation.

EMILY's List, a PAC that describes itself as a "donor network" for pro-choice Democratic women, saw its membership skyrocket from 3,500 to 22,000 by mid-October, and its receipts increase from $1.5 million in the last election cycle to some $6 million.

In September a well-mannered mob of 2,500 women - and a few men - inundated a DNC-sponsored luncheon featuring Hillary Clinton and Tipper Gore. What was to have been a routine $100-a-plate, sit-down luncheon at the Washington Hilton became a raucously successful (to the tune of some $250,000), sit-on-the-floor, indoor picnic. The Democrats, needless to say, were delighted.

"We've been collecting money like crazy," confided DNC spokesperson Brooks Rathet.

While most of these women contributors are Democrats, a steady flow of checks from women also poured into Republican Party coffers. WISH List, the GOP's EMILY, has raised more than $400,000 since it was founded last December. This positive response from Republican women has exceeded "our wildest imagination," says Executive Director Lynn Shapiro.

But Republican Kathryn Thompson, one of only 14 women on George Bush's Team 100 of 249 $100,000 donors in 1988, took her money and her fundraising skills to the Clinton campaign. In September Thompson, a leading home-builder in Orange County, Calif., hosted a luncheon where some 800 women, most of them Republicans, honored Hillary Clinton and contributed almost $100,000 to her husband's campaign.

Some of the motivations seem clear: outrage over last year's Clarence Thomas-Anita Hill hearings, abortion, family leave and other social issues, and the record number of women running for House and Senate seats.

The contributions also were a "reaction to the way Hillary Clinton was treated at the Republican Convention," said the DNC's Rathet. The "intolerance" and "the hate coming out of die convention" was the last straw for Republican Thompson, although an earlier experience at a Team 100 event couldn't have helped. One of only a dozen or so top GOP givers attending the exclusive reception, Thompson was approached by then-Republican Party Chair Clayton Yeutter, who asked, "And who do you belong to, little lady?"

But if the flood of campaign contributions from women represents to some a watershed event in American politics, to others it resembles all too closely the constant obsession with money - much of it raised in questionable ways - plaguing traditional politics. And even if the motivations behind the contributions are different - officials of women's political groups say their donors are not seeking personal or corporate power - the results are often the same: a movement away from grassroots-level politics and an emphasis on big money.

Women candidates for Congress may present themselves as agents of change, but when it comes to the business of "pandering to donors" and endlessly chasing campaign contributions, "they're the same as the guys," says one PAC official.

Margery Tabankin, executive director of the Hollywood Women's Political Committee, recognizes the risks. Her group has contributed $5.2 million dollars to federal candidates since 1984, and its 1,500 members also contribute directly to candidates. But, "one has to be aware that the money game is corrupting," Tabankin warns, adding that even women's money can be dirty. "We would like to take all [private] money out of politics, we would like to see the end of PACs," she says.

Ellen Miller, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, is pleased by the rise of women candidates and the "fabulous job" EMILY's List has done of getting women involved in politics. But she is critical of attempts to circumvent limits on contributions to candidates from individuals and PACs, and concerned about the role of soft money in presidential campaigns - even if it comes from women.

Historically, women candidates have not been able to raise as much money as their male counterparts, Miller says. And until this year there was not enough campaign money to go around to all the women candidates who needed it. Women candidates "have had to be just as good as the men in raising money to finance their campaigns," she adds, and, thanks to EMILY's List and others, many of them now are. Senators-elect Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein, both of California, and Carol Moseley Braun of Illinois raised more money than their male opponents.

But at what price? In their efforts to win political office, women candidates - usually running on a platform of change - play into the "same political system that requires that they raise millions of dollars, spend all of their time doing it and succumb to the same pressures" from contributors that has shut them out for so long, Miller says.

They also risk becoming beholden to the same special interests controlling the status quo, she adds. Miller relates a conversation with a friend working in the Braun campaign who was amazed to discover what contributors expect to get for their money. "He actually used the word |extortion,"' Miller says. But the campaign was taking the contributions anyway because it "needs the money," she says he added.

EMILY's List operates somewhat differently. Its members make their contribution checks payable directly to a candidate's campaign, but they send the checks to EMILY's List. The pro-choice group then "bundles" all checks to a certain candidate and presents them.

In a break with the past, EMILY's List also contributed soft money this year. It funneled $50,000 to the Democratic State Committee in Pennsylvania, where Democrat Lynn Yeakel was running for the Senate against Sen. Arlen Specter, and it sent $25,000 to the Missouri Democratic Party in support of Democrat Geri Rothman-Serot's campaign against Sen. Kit Bond. Both women lost.

EMILY's List officials insist they are not a "special interest" and do not lobby members of Congress on legislative issues, but "when we send an envelope, they definitely know it's from EMILY's List," says one.

And with that knowledge comes the kind of access that members of Congress give "special interests." That's why EMILY's List has fought efforts to outlaw bundling, a practice that enables PACs to exceed contribution limits by making clear that all the individual checks come from one place.

"To allow EMILy's List to bundle is to allow [Wall Street firm] Goldman, Sachs to bundle," Miller says. And corporations will always be able to raise more money than issue-oriented groups. Women are "buying into a system which is fundamentally unbalanced and in which they cannot win," Miller says.

"There will never be a balance between ideological and corporate contributions," she says. "There are far fewer very wealthy women than there are wealthy corporate interests. If Swanee Hunt can give $225,000, [agribusiness mogul] Dwayne Andreas can give a million."

In fact - along with his company, Archer Daniels Midland - he has.

Many of the checks that flowed into Clinton-Gore and Democratic Party headquarters this year were for unusually small amounts - $10, $20, even $5, said the DNC's Rathet. Those are the kinds of checks that signal new levels of political involvement by citizens who've never participated in the system before. And that kind of involvement presents opportunities for change.

But under the current campaign finance system, many candidates believe they need the $1,000 checks, the $5,000 PAC contributions, and the bundled and soft money donations that get around legal limits. And for every one of those checks a candidate accepts, the smaller checks - and the men and women behind them - mean less.

COPYRIGHT 1992 Common Cause Magazine
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group