{"id":65257,"date":"2017-12-15T18:38:29","date_gmt":"2017-12-16T00:38:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=65257"},"modified":"2017-12-17T12:34:15","modified_gmt":"2017-12-17T18:34:15","slug":"new-pacs-aim-to-empower-women-candidates-voters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/new-pacs-aim-to-empower-women-candidates-voters\/","title":{"rendered":"New PACs Aim to Empower Women Candidates, Voters"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><strong>by Kate Cimini<\/strong><br \/>\n<em>Medill Reports<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"dropcap\">For Sameena Mustafa, it was about the principle of the thing.<\/p>\n<p>A first-time candidate running for Congress in Chicago\u2019s 5th district, where she lives, Mustafa decided to eschew any and all corporate donations, even refusing a friend\u2019s donation from her dental practice. The former real estate advocate and comedian believed focusing her fundraising around individual donors would be a way to give voice to her constituents.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhen the Democratic Party began taking money from corporations in the \u201870s we diverged from our ideals,\u201d Mustafa said. \u201cWe forgot we represented people, and we need to re-focus on individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Post-Hillary Clinton, women\u2019s participation in politics has increased dramatically. They are running for office, organizing marches and attending protests. Organizations such as Emily\u2019s List have noted a huge surge in interest; 20,000 women alone signed up in the year since the 2016 presidential election for \u201chow to run\u201d seminars. In the two years from 2015-2016, Emily\u2019s List heard from 950 women.<\/p>\n<p>Women\u2019s participation in the political process has also grown significantly on the donor side. While women historically have preferred to donate to nonprofits or causes they care about, allowing men to direct where political dollars go, the number of women donating to political campaigns and representatives has jumped overall.<\/p>\n<p>According to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan organization, the number of women donors to federal candidates and committees shot up by about 284 percent so far in the 2017-2018 election cycle, as compared to the 2015-2016 cycle.<\/p>\n<p>The number of women donating to a federal campaign increased by 670 percent when compared with the 2011-2012 cycle.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe fund-raisers I went to in the late 1990s, it was mostly men writing the checks,\u201d Amy Rao, Democratic donor and chief executive of a Silicon Valley data-management firm, told the New York Times. \u201cNow it\u2019s mostly women. And a lot of these women are younger. They work full time. They are writing their own checks.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>This has led to the creation of several women-focused PACs, aimed at helping to support women candidates, as well as to grow the number of women who donate to political campaigns each year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWomen are much more motivated and engaged than ever before,\u201d said Meghan Christiansen, executive director for an organization called Cause the Effect, an Illinois-based organization which launched a PAC on the one-year anniversary of 2016\u2019s Election Day.<\/p>\n<p>It aims to generate money for candidates on the state and local levels in Illinois, where most women candidates focus their energies. This will give Cause the Effect the ability to have a greater immediate impact than it would if it focused on the federal level, where hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on races.<\/p>\n<p>Corporate donations do, historically, tend to be larger for male candidates. And although women comprise a much larger percentage of the workforce than they did 50 years ago, earning and owning more capital \u2013 despite earning lower salaries on average \u2013 men still make most of the decisions on which candidates to support financially.<\/p>\n<p>This has started to change rapidly in the past few years, with Clinton\u2019s failed bid for the presidency acting as a watershed moment. Christiansen, who worked in women\u2019s outreach for the Hillary Clinton campaign in Wisconsin, recalled seeing the shift firsthand.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWomen were starting to give politically more than they had before,\u201d Christiansen said. \u201cI think for those of us at the ground level, we saw that there was still this need for women to take ownership over that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As candidates like Mustafa are coming up on registration deadlines in Chicago, fundraising becomes even more important. PACs like Cause the Effect could allow women candidates to take a hard-line approach as Mustafa has, avoiding corporate donations. Simultaneously, those behind the PACs believe this will open the door for women donors, allowing their voices to be heard at all levels of government.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSince the 2016 election you\u2019ve seen this movement of women who now want to make their voices heard by making political contributions to the candidates that share their values,\u201d said Christiansen. \u201cWe want to nurture this movement of women giving to women.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt makes women who are writing the checks feel empowered and that they have a voice,\u201d Christiansen added. \u201cWhen you&#8217;re writing a check to a candidate that shares your values, that&#8217;s important.\u201d<\/p>\n<div class=\"featurecaption\">Photo at top: Wabash and Jackson, 21 January 2017, 13:17, Women&#8217;s March, Brad Hagan<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Kate Cimini Medill Reports For Sameena Mustafa, it was about the principle of the thing. A first-time candidate running for Congress in Chicago\u2019s 5th district, where she lives, Mustafa decided to eschew any and all corporate donations, even refusing a friend\u2019s donation from her dental practice. The former real estate advocate and comedian believed [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":423,"featured_media":65258,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3912],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-65257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fall-2017"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.6 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>New PACs Aim to Empower Women Candidates, Voters - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/new-pacs-aim-to-empower-women-candidates-voters\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"New PACs Aim to Empower Women Candidates, Voters - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"by Kate Cimini Medill Reports For Sameena Mustafa, it was about the principle of the thing. A first-time candidate running for Congress in Chicago\u2019s 5th district, where she lives, Mustafa decided to eschew any and all corporate donations, even refusing a friend\u2019s donation from her dental practice. The former real estate advocate and comedian believed [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/new-pacs-aim-to-empower-women-candidates-voters\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2017-12-16T00:38:29+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2017-12-17T18:34:15+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2017\/12\/Womens_March_Chicago_31651531463.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1100\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"730\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"kaitlincimini2018\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"kaitlincimini2018\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/new-pacs-aim-to-empower-women-candidates-voters\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/new-pacs-aim-to-empower-women-candidates-voters\/\",\"name\":\"New PACs Aim to Empower Women Candidates, Voters - 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