Delegates tap talents for funds
Many get creative to cover trip costs, others turn to online sites
A second job. Selling tamales. Designing and marketing a deck of “woman cards.”
The path to the Democratic National Convention took some creative turns for delegates facing expensive hotel rooms and travel costs. In a sign of the times, GoFundMe and other online fundraising sites also played a big role.
Iowa delegate Zach Wahls, 25, of Iowa City, has not only paid for his trip to Philadelphia but made a dent in the cost of going to grad school at Princeton with “The Woman Cards.”
He created the deck of playing cards, each featuring a famous woman, with his younger sister, Zebby.
“Back in late April, Donald Trump accused Hillary Clinton of playing the woman card,” Zach Wahls said. “My little sister and I wanted to figure out a way to take that negative comment and make it a positive.”
The two created an online fundraiser via Kickstarter, hoping to raise $5,000 to make a couple of decks. Zebby Wahls created all the original artwork, including portraits of Clinton on the ace and Ellen DeGeneres on one of the jokers. To date, they have raised just over $150,000.
Zach Wahls is selling the decks out of his backpack during the convention. People can also order them at thewomancards.com. “It feels really good to have created something with my sister that has turned out positive,” he said.
Here’s something Wahls’ fellow Iowa’s delegation didn’t think about when they began this journey way back on caucus night: $600-a-night hotel rooms.
Iowa’s 51 delegates, six committee members, four alternates, two pages and sundry hangers-on are staying at the downtown Marriott hotel in the center of Philadelphia, just a few miles from the arena where Hillary Clinton will accept the party’s presidential nomination Thursday night.
That’s marquee real-estate and poses big logistical advantages over other locations. But the cost — ranging, according to one delegate, from $569 to $629 per night for five nights — has put a strain on many delegates.
At least two dozen members of the Iowa delegation set up accounts with the online personal fundraising service GoFundMe to seek donations to subsidize their trips.
One prominent Iowan is hopping mad at the Democratic National Committee.
“That’s just criminal,” former U.S. senator Tom Harkin said. “I can afford it, but how about some of these other people that are just delegates from Iowa — how the hell do they afford something like that?”
Well, many are turning to friends and neighbors.
Cindy Pollard, a delegate from Newton, said the hotel was by far the biggest burden on making the trip, but said it’s been offset by an outpouring of donations through GoFundMe and other sources. Jasper County Democrats sent her off last Thursday with a party and a $1,000 check. Altogether she raised $4,000, and expects to spend about $3,000 of it on the Marriott.
Minnesota delegate Liz De La Torre has tamales to thank for getting her to the convention.
The 30-year-old Hillary Clinton delegate from St. Paul didn’t have much time to raise money after she survived the competitive process of being chosen for her first national convention — and her first trip to the East Coast. De La Torre thought about how well her tamales went over when she brought them to potluck dinners.
“Mexican restaurants sell them, but they never taste as good as my grandma’s,” she said.
Fortunately, De La Torre’s grandmother and great aunt visited from Mexico for a family event around the Fourth of July and she enlisted their help, along with her mother’s and sister’s.
They made and sold about 800 tamales in four days, enough to meet her $2,000 fundraising goal.
Rachelle Norberg wanted to go to the Democratic National Convention because she’s always looked up to Hillary Clinton.
“She was the first female political activist I was able to see growing up,” said the 23-year-old from Burke, S.D. “It just felt like something I had to do.”
Norberg, already working for a local attorney this summer after her first year of law school, took a second job bartending and set up a GoFundMe page.
Although South Dakota isn’t exactly Clinton territory, Norberg made her fundraising goal.
De’Vante Montgomery, 19, doesn’t come from a wealthy family either. Any money he earns at his job at P.F. Chang ’s helps pay tuition at Ohio’s Miami University, where he is a sophomore studying political science with an eye on law school.
But when the Kenwood, Ohio, teen was chosen as an at-large delegate for the swing state that will be crucial to Clinton, he used GoFundMe to raise $3,190.
De La Torre, the tamale maker, is also stretching her cash, bunking with two others — another Clinton delegate and a Sanders delegate.
“We all are coming from the same place,” she said. “We want to engage these new people who are coming into this process. How do we meet each other half way? That’s what we’re all trying to figure out.”