Buying Power: Women and Political Donations
November 27, 2008 by blackgirlgrown
Filed under black women, politics
Sheila Cohen and her friend Julie Fagan are sipping coffee on Cohen’s screened-in back porch in Madison, Wisconsin, kicking around whether they want to try to repeat their over-the-top success as first-time political fund-raisers. In the world of campaign finance, what they accomplished during the 2004 presidential race — raising $143,000 for John Kerry in just two months — was so unexpected that this is a little like having won the U.S. Open the first season you picked up a tennis racket and then mulling over whether you want to keep playing.
Fagan, 53, a doctor who specializes in internal medicine and women’s health, describes herself as a “cheap and frugal” person who had never donated to a presidential candidate. Cohen, 68, a freelance writer, had mainly volunteered for such uninspiring tasks as looking up ZIP codes and sealing envelopes. As they grew more passionate about the election, however, they and seven friends met at Cohen’s house to discuss getting involved on the money end, where campaigns are won and lost. (In 406 of the 435 Congressional races in 2006, the winners were the candidates who outspent the competition.) “Sheila had wonderful food, like she always does,” Fagan remembers, eyeing the cookies that are today’s temptation. “We sat around in the family room, brainstorming. You’d like to think that voting is enough, but it isn’t.”
The straight-to-the-gut fund-raising pitch that Cohen, Fagan, and seven of their friends came up with that first night was: “What’s more important to you in the long run: $1,000 or four more years of George Bush?” It worked so well that “I got mostly yeses and almost no push-back,” says Fagan, an intent woman who speaks with such conviction that her dangling earrings dance. “I’ve run school auctions and had to work harder for $30.” Despite losing the election, Kerry did win Wisconsin. “We were hoping that the election would be the real reward” for donors, Fagan says with a sigh. But she and Cohen insist it is not the electoral loss that’s making them so hesitant about raising money again for 2008: “I hate asking for money,” Fagan says. “I hate asking my friends … I hate to impose my views.” So while their accomplishment shows the impact women can have when they do get involved, their ambivalence just as clearly explains why more of us don’t. Read More.
