Despite year-of-the-woman buzz, female candidates lag behind men in fundraising
Lauren Baer, a former Obama administration foreign policy adviser, has been buoyed by a string of endorsements from Democratic Party officials and national House leaders in her first-time bid for Congress.
But for all the attention on her race in South Florida – one of the most competitive in the country – Baer has one significant disadvantage in her campaign to unseat Republican Brian Mast: money.
“I know that we have a message that resonates in our community,” said Baer, who had raised $1.6 million – less than half as much as Mast – by the end of June. “But I also know that my viability, at the end of the day, depends on the amount of money that exists in my campaign coffers.”
Even as a record number of women run for office this year, female congressional candidates overall are lagging behind their male counterparts when it comes to pulling in campaign cash, according to a Washington Post analysis of federal campaign finance reports.
Men running for the House had collected almost 17 percent more on average than their female counterparts by the end of June, The Post found in its examination of candidates who showed viability by raising at least $50,000.
One driving factor: Many female candidates lack relationships with longtime political donors who work in traditionally male-dominated industries such as finance. Democratic congressional candidate Katie Hill at a canvassing event in Santa Clarita on Aug. 4.
That is a particular challenge for women this cycle, because the majority are newcomers to politics and, like any non-incumbent, must build donor networks from scratch. But their task is often more difficult, some female candidates said, because of skepticism about their potential, based on their gender.
“The assumptions that are built into our political system is that the candidate is male,” said Baer, who said she has frequently been asked by donors and supporters about who is caring for her young child.
One group of female candidates who outraised their male counterparts: Democratic women seeking office in districts that lean left – a sign of the enthusiasm in the base to support women this year. In those districts, women collected an average of $97,000 more than men, The Post found.
In Minnesota, for example, state legislator Ilhan Omar, a Somali refugee
who would be one of the first Muslim woman elected to Congress, handily outraised two of her three Democratic challengers – including a male opponent – before winning her primary Tuesday.
Female candidates in some marquee toss-up races are also seeing a flood of cash.
That has been the case for Katie Hill, a 30-year-old nonprofit-group executive from Santa Clarita who is seeking to dislodge Rep. Steve Knight, the last Republican who still holds a congressional seat in Los Angeles County.
Hill had raised $2.5 million to Knight’s $1.7 million by the end of June – a remarkable feat in a district that has been held by a Republican for 25 years. In a sign of grass-roots enthusiasm for her bid, onequarter of her campaign cash came from donations of $200 or less. Such donations made up just 1.4 percent of Knight’s haul.
Hill, who is bisexual, has
attracted backers from an array of constituencies, including LGBTQ advocacy groups, a Los Angeles-area women’s network and Hollywood celebrities such as actress Kristen Bell, whom she met through her work advocating for the homeless.
“I met people who took me under their wing, and then it sort of spread ... into this Venn diagram of relationships that you have to keep building and building,” Hill said in an interview after a recent campaign event in her district. “That is something I couldn’t have really anticipated before I was a candidate – how much the momentum builds on itself, like a snowball.”
But such a dramatic financial windfall is the exception for female candidates.
Men raised an average of $849,000 by June 30 – according to the most recent data available – while women pulled in an average of $728,000, The Post found.