Small donors, especially via the web, have increasingly helped build war chests for female candidates

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As Fund-Raisers in Congress, Women Break the Cash Ceiling
By Jennifer Steinhauer, November 29, 2013

The first time Senator Patty Murray ran for local office, she was so embarrassed to ask people for money for her campaign that she and her husband held a garage sale. But her generous husband could not stop himself from giving away an expensive lawn mower, she said, leaving the fund-raiser at a net loss.

By the time she ran for the Senate in 1992, she had gained the confidence to hold out the hat enthusiastically.

“I learned that you have to ask people,” said Ms. Murray, Democrat of Washington, adding, “The guys could go to the Chamber of Commerce. I went to the moms who had kids in preschool.”

For decades, female candidates lagged behind their male counterparts in fund-raising, largely because donors, most of them men, did not have faith in their ability to win. Women — the go-to donors for female office seekers — were historically more interested in giving to causes than to candidates.

But over the last decade, women running for Congress have raised on average more than their male counterparts, and substantially more in the Senate in election cycles when prominent women like Hillary Rodham Clinton and Elizabeth Warren were in the game.

Ms. Warren, who has emerged as a fund-raising powerhouse, collected $42.1 million for her race last year in Massachusetts, the most money a woman has ever raised in a Senate campaign. Second place goes to Mrs. Clinton, who raised $38.7 million for her 2006 Senate re-election campaign.

The financial advantage among women is especially true for Democrats, who have benefited from a fund-raising machine for liberal female candidates, the increase in female donors, who tend to give to Democrats, and the rise of small donations, which have helped women in particular.

“There has been a change in people’s perceptions of women’s ability to run and the power they are able to accumulate once elected,” said Dee Dee Myers, the author of “Why Women Should Rule the World” and a managing director at the Glover Park Group, a Washington lobbying and communications firm. “In politics, money follows the winners.”

Women in the Senate, who now hold a record 20 seats and lead some of the most powerful committees, tell a lifetime of stories about running for office and being told they could not win — and therefore would not be getting a check.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, recalled her race for governor in 1990, when people suggested that she get her rich husband to pay for the campaign, and women were afraid to spend their own money. “One woman asked me, ‘How can I help?’” Ms. Feinstein said. “I said, ‘You can make a contribution,’ and she said, ‘I’ll need to ask my husband.’ There was enormous bias against women by other women. And that’s been the biggest change.”

Female Democratic candidates have been helped the most by other women. The Center for Responsive Politics reports that Democratic women running for Congress in 2014 have received almost 40 percent of their money from women, compared with 29 percent for female Republicans.

Many Democrats credit Emily’s List, a political action committee established in 1985 to help Democratic women who support abortion rights. Since its founding, it has raised over $350 million and has helped elect hundreds of women around the country.

Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland and the longest-serving woman in the Senate, said that when Emily’s List paid for a poll in her first Senate race, in 1986, it showed a base of support that indicated she could win. “It showed I had a core base in an area that was determinative,” she said. “Emily’s List has just been an enormous force.”

Republicans have sought to catch up. “There is a lot more money in the Democratic Party,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the Susan B. Anthony List, which supports candidates who oppose abortion.

Senator Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, said the men in her party often hurt contributions to Republican women. “There have been times when a few Republican candidates have made truly offensive and outrageous statements that unfortunately have splashed on other Republicans among women donors,” she said.

Once women accumulate power, their fund-raising ability grows much stronger. Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, who is one of the most robust fund-raisers in the country, recalled that when she first set out to raise money as a congresswoman, “I could not raise large sums for the party because people would say to me, ‘You don’t have any decision-making power here.’ ”

“That is why I ran for whip,” she added. “When you call people and tell people what your purpose is, you’re likely to get something.”

But women, who still run for office at a far lower rate than men, are stymied by the business groups and local boards that tend to give money more readily to first-time male candidates than to first-time female candidates. But women have gotten better at employing social networks and fund-raisers that focus on female guests. Women’s lunches with speakers aimed at female audiences have become important for female candidates, who also work the neighborhoods. “We have great networking at the store and the PTA,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, Democrat of Missouri.

Ms. Collins said she once attended a workshop on fund-raising and asked the women leading it whom to seek out for contributions. “The advice was to use my Christmas card list,” she said. “It was actually great advice.”

Ms. Collins and others said that women routinely asked for too little. When running for the Senate in 1996, she declined to put a $1,000 check box on an envelope for donors because she thought it seemed like too much, sticking instead with a $500 cap. The first thing her campaign manager did, she said, was throw out the donation envelopes and order new ones with a $1,000 box to check.

“Your ask can never be too big, because nobody is insulted by that,” said Roz Wyman, a major Democratic fund-raiser in Los Angeles. “In small states, they never ask for enough money.”

But this has been offset for women by the increasing role of small donors, especially via the web, who have helped build war chests for candidates of both sexes. “The strength of our effort right now is our small donors,” said Ms. Pelosi, who would like to see legislation that provides matching funds for such donations. “It’s a mobilizing tool, as well as a fund-raising tool.” Women still make up only 20 percent of donors to political action committees, compared with 15 percent in 1990.

Small donors started to turn the dollars toward women, and the trend seems likely to continue. Ms. Murray’s fortunes turned when she ran for the Senate and women would send her $10 bills with notes saying, “I know you’ll spend it wisely.”
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