Meg Whitman and The Money Trap
June 7, 2010
by Anna Belle Pfau
|The opinions expressed herein are those of the author, and not necessarily those of The New Agenda.
As the California Republican primary race for governor draws to a close, much is being made of Meg Whitman’s largely self-financed campaign. Funny, I don’t recall such a fuss or such attention to detail when male candidates have done it. Remember Republicans Steve Forbes and Mitt Romney? What about Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York City? Democrats may have made a little noise about their self-financing, but I don’t recall any articles written detailing what hotels they stayed at or the “white glove service” of chartered airplanes they used.
Democrats don’t have much to say when one of their own guys does it. Interestingly enough, you won’t find many such articles about Minnesota Democratic Gubernatorial candidate Mark Dayton, who spent $12 million pursuing the Senate seat he won in 2000, and is running a largely self-financed campaign this year. His story is certainly not dominating the media headlines like Whitman’s. You may not remember Rahm Emanuel’s $450,000 loan to his own campaign in 2002, probably because it did not make the news, though it was reported at the end of this article about Barack Obama, six years after the fact.
You are probably also not reading about billionaire Jeff Greene, Democratic Senate candidate from Florida, or Rick Scott, a Republican who is running for Governor of the same state and has already contributed millions of dollars to his own campaign. Both intend to do a lot more self-financing of their campaigns. These stories are covered only in local media, and without the hint of the judgment that invariably infuses articles about Whitman’s wealth.
So why is Meg Whitman’s story a big deal? Some will say it’s because the race is in California, or because her contributions set a record, but I contend it’s because she’s a woman. I contend this because I have watched for the last two years as political women and their wealth have continued to pop up in media stories that are designed to denigrate them.
I first noticed this trend during Hillary Clinton’s campaign. When she loaned her campaign $5 million during the 2008 primary, it was instant news, as were subsequent loans she made, totaling $13 million. I thought this was weird at the time, because I recalled John Kerry loaning himself $6.4 million for his primary campaign in 2004, and he did not garner nearly as much media coverage for it.
Then there was the brou-ha over Sarah Palin’s pricey wardrobe. (She’s recently also come under fire for daring to accumulate wealth.) This campaign cycle it’s been Meg Whitman, Carly Fiorina, and Linda McMahon who are the culprits, while little attention is given to similar male candidates.
As you can clearly see, there’s a double standard when it comes to men, women, and money. I call the double standard the money trap. We may have a come a long way, baby, but it’s still unseemly for a woman to amass a fortune, especially if she uses it to enrich her own life. There are no female equivalents to Warren Buffet or Michael Bloomberg, both of whom generally enjoy the public’s affections. When women are rich, whether they came that way or made themselves that way, they do not get the same respect. Just ask Oprah, who seems as belittled in the media as she is beloved by the public.
The biggest clue that Whitman’s media coverage is about the money trap for women is the treatment of Whitman’s own rival, Steve Poizner. Poizner has spent some $25 million of his own money, and yet we are not hearing stories about his self-financing except in relation to reports about the record-breaking amounts both candidates have spent in the race. His contributions, when they are reported, are mentioned almost as an afterthought to hers. There are no stand-alone stories about Poizner’s use of his own cash to advance his campaign.
Meg Whitman is a self-made woman who amassed her fortune running eBay, which turned out to be one of the biggest Internet start-up companies to come out of the 1990s. She made her money honestly and I don’t see why she shouldn’t use it to advance her political career, just as Mark Dayton, Jeff Greene, and Rick Scott are. Both sides are guilty of exploiting this double standard for political gain, and it is up to us to call them out on it or nothing will change. Perhaps we can even use it to our advantage. Here’s a sound bite that would kill: Meg Whitman’s use of her own money means she won’t be as beholden to special interests as some.
I agree with you AB. Interesting the the corp women are playing by traditionally male rules of engagement and getting criticized. Whether of not one believes in campaign reform, it’s not here yet!
Similarly, Linda McMahon was supposedly responsible for the opp research up in CT that led to the NYT article on Blumenthal.
Thanks to Amy for flagging this for me.
For those of us who for years have written and complained about the ridiculous amount of money spent on elections and who have supported public financing of campaigns, the race itself is the example, not the candidate’s gender. The complaints about the cost are, in fact, often raised because of the barrier they cause for women and this year there’s no better example than in my state, Ohio – Jennifer Brunner, our excellent Secretary of State who was an excellent candidate in the Democratic primary for the US Senate race.
The perception – just the mere perception – that she might not be able to raise money, let alone enough money, was enough for the media and individuals to then judge her viability by whether or not she could raise money. (That a self-funded candidate does not have to face that challenge is great, but on the flip side: let’s look at how many women are getting ahead BECAUSE they can self-fund – in other words, would the parties/people support these candidates if they didn’t have the ability to self-fund? Think about that.)
And this perception related to money, in Brunner’s case, was amplified repeatedly and in myriad ways (by the media and individuals alike) to the point where it drowned out the reality of her skills and ability and well-suitedness to the Senate, over and above her opponent, because people kept thinking that they had to think to themselves, “Hmm – but you know, she’s not raising the bucks – guess she’s not viable – guess she’s not worth me giving her the bucks if others aren’t giving her the bucks.”
And on the flip side, here in Ohio we have a state treasurer’s race in which the ONLY thing you ever read about in regard to one of the candidates (who is a male) is how much money he’s raised. That’s it. Never anything written about his skills, abilities or suitedness to the job.
And for a third example just from my state again, right-wing blogs in particular have lambasted Auditor Mary Taylor (a Republican) as being lazy and unable or unwilling to raise money and she has also been picked on because the state GOP had given her campaign money in 2006. I had been pushing for her to run in the GOP primary but she is now the Lt Gov candidate on the John Kasich ticket). And I’ve written before specifically about whether the ORP would be so willing to support her again in the face of all the males waiting in line (and indeed, before she joined the Kasich ticket, there was a whole lot of “she should wait her turn” stuff).
The core issue is the emphasis our electoral system, the way it currently operates, places on money, on every level. It’s a gender neutral problem except to the extent that for women, it can be far more difficult to raise the funds to compete.
Since I’m confident that no one here would suggest that for those of for whom the gazillions spent on political races is a problem, that we should not notice what is being spent simply because it’s being spent by a woman, I’m going to assume that the concern has more to do with feeling that the media is only looking at women who spend, and not men who spend, or looking at the women who spend in a way that’s different and sexist than at men who spend.
I personally do not see that in the way it’s been covered but then I look at the overall issue of the amount in play – I don’t actually care whether it’s self-funded or not; the amount it cost the Obama campaign was equally astronomical. I think of media coverage of Ned Lamont and Ross Perot and Scott Murphy right off the bat, and Ganley is another great example. Likewise here in Cuyahoga County we have a very wealthy businessman named Ken Lanci running as an independent who bought a full 30 minutes of 12noon on Sunday time for an infomercial all about him, and he is campaigning on saying that he will only take $1 for his salary (the job is County Executive and pays $175,000).
I would love to see a longitudinal review of self-funding – I’m sure something is out there. But we must know from the start that without substantial numbers of women running, in comparison to men with money to self-fund, we’d just be getting a feeling, but it still would be interesting to see.
RealClearPolitics, which tends to be non-partisan, published this excellent review of self-funded candidates this year for US House seats – and they’re all male:
http://www.realclearpolitics.c.....05238.html
The top self-funded race? It’s in my state and it’s Tom Ganley, an auto-dealer owner, against incumbent…Betty Sutton. (I’ve written before on my own blog about how many women incumbents in targeted races but with men opposing them, versus other women.)
Also, just googling “which candidates spend the most” I found this article (http://www.washingtontimes.com.....lics-love/) with the following paragraph:
And then it goes on to talk about Corzine and other male candidates.
In sum, as I see it, the issue of money in a race is a gender-neutral one and people, male and female, have trouble with it. In fact, look at the success that Maine, with public finance, has had with women running for office (i.e., three of the Dem candidates for Gov are women (out of five) and not one of the seven GOP candidates for Gov are women). Maybe a look at public financing and how it could help women reach parity in political representation would be a good blog post topic if you’ve not done one on it recently.
I think it is remarkable that we have women who can self-fund, often as a result of barriers being broken over the last several decades, so that they’ve been able to work and accumulate that wealth and then spend it to compete – since that does indeed appear to be a big part of the competing. And that’s something that NPR noted in two articles late last week that discuss the plethora of GOP female candidates this year (see here for more: http://www.writeslikeshetalks......e-in-2010/).
I would urge those who are upset by the focus on money to examine the excellent groups already organized around pushing for the public financing of campaigns like Youstreet. I find the expenditures absolutely outrageous and enriching many of the wrong people, not to mention the time fundraising takes away from the real work of not only what I think campaigning should be about, but once in office, of governing and legislating. That is the real loss we suffer with the emphasis on money.
(FYI re: the special interests concern – public financing would solve that too.)
Good points Jill.
As you know, we followed Jennifer Brunner closely here too. What happened was very disappointing (don’t know the other Ohio politicians that you name and the background there).
Do you think Brunner was more a victim of the Democratic Party? I read a great op-ed by the woman who runs Women’s Campaign Forum about the Dems lack of backing both Brunner and Hanabusa. Is this a party issue?
Jill, I almost included a bit in this article about the money barrier you mentioned, about how it’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t when it comes to women, money, and politics.
Just to clarify, I didn’t say male candidates didn’t get any attention for self-funding, I said they got a different kind of attention. It’s not national news for men unless a national candidate does it, and even then the difference in treatment between males and females in the media is pronounced (see Kerry v Clinton). And articles about males self-financing do not start with quips about “white glove service.” Whitman is not a national candidate, but who hasn’t read a story about her self-funding? Where are the articles about Poizner’s spending-habits?
Amy, re: how much to fault the party (I’m assuming you mean the state but could be the national too I suppose):
It’s undeniable that the ODP’s posture in the Fisher-Brunner race had an influence on the outcome. I am pretty unfamiliar with the Hanabusa situation though toward the very end I read a couple of pieces but just didn’t follow closely.
I’m sure that Jennifer and David Dettman, her campaign manager, and others who worked on the campaign have their thoughts on the extent to which the state party’s position on the race hampered her effort but I don’t know if they’d say it was the chief factor – they might, but I’m not convinced, I’m mostly unsure. There were a lot of factors as you know.
It’s clear that the party has great influence (Cynthia Ruccia for one can absolutely speak to that) but with about 1/3 of all registered voters being literally unaffiliated in Ohio, a big trick to the GOTV effort in a primary race is to see how many of those you can get to vote in a partisan primary in the first place, esp. if you are not a darling of the formal party.
Both Fisher and Brunner are statewide officeholders, but here’s another part of where the systemic gender bias played a big role in their race: Lee’s longevity alone convinced some people to choose him – just take a look at the Plain Dealer’s endorsement for a woeful exhibition of misguided logic based almost exclusively on that longevity, while praising Jennifer for ability.
And how did he get that longevity? Through a political, electoral system that otherwise has seen men enter politics at an early age – he entered at 28 or 29, which is the average age at which men enter politics according to some research (either White House Project, Rutgers or both has said this). Likewise, he is now the precise average age of sitting senators – 58 I believe. So he’s a quintessential beneficiary of a system that sees men enter early and women enter later (which is what Jennifer did).
Let me be clear – this is not to fault Lee, per se. He has been a reliable Democrat in terms of its principles and I personally like him. What I’m saying is that any male politician with a similar profile as his has a systemic advantage bestowed and begun way before now.
And it’s that kind of advantage that gave rise to term limits (although I’m not a fan of them at all – they’ve just not worked as people had hoped, but I didn’t support them even at the beginning) and powers efforts like the White House Project and the Women’s Campaign Forum and She Should Run: we HAVE to get women to run earlier in order to get that longevity, but we also have to succeed more at demonstrating why longevity should not be the holy grail, as it has been used in the past by those who have it far beyond what many women politicians can have.
Anyway – all of us who know Jennifer and supported her, Jennifer included, knew pretty much from the outset when she announced that the party would be problematic. They could have been even more problematic but that their stance contributed at all to her defeat is a shame.
Hi Anna Belle,
Thanks for the response. I’d like to respond directly to this:
“It’s not national news for men unless a national candidate does it, and even then the difference in treatment between males and females in the media is pronounced (see Kerry v Clinton). And articles about males self-financing do not start with quips about “white glove service.” Whitman is not a national candidate, but who hasn’t read a story about her self-funding? Where are the articles about Poizner’s spending-habits?”
I very respectfully would quibble with the assertion that Whitman is not a national candidate. While of course she is running for an office that will be voted on only in California, she is in the national spotlight because of her eBay business background and her viability to ultimately win the general election. Likewise, California itself is a national topic due to factors such as the size of the state’s deficit, the immigration issues it must tackle, the pension issues, and the mere immensity of the population, as a percentage of the overall nation’s population (being from Connecticut originally and Ohio now, which is just a few back from CA on this measure, it’s only within the last year or two that I’ve come to understand why people look at Ohio so often on so many issues but it’s our size and demographics among other things).
It is fair and appropriate and reasonable to examine the difference in how male versus female candidates are treated in regard to any issue that is a relevant issue to be looked at during a campaign. I confess – every time I’ve seen anything on the money being spent in Calif., it’s been in that exact context – not a focus on one candidate more than the other, in more biased ways but rather overall as in, “look how much is being spent on the gov’s seat” and then a breakdown by candidate etc.
As for reviewing spending habits, again – think Harold Ford, and of course John Edwards and the haircut.
These are media-propelled and created. We have to, as I read what you’re doing, get people to not care about these details, then the media won’t cover them – they cover them because they think it sells what they’re buying. We have to not buy it. And we have to instead focus on the substance.
The only point I’ll raise against myself (!?) is that, for example, I do think that donors to campaigns should have complete and total access to how money is spent because it is the donors who, I believe, have a right to complain about how their donations contribute. If a donor then wants to say to himself or herself, “uck – I can’t support someone who is prioritizing this over that” or whatever, then the donor should, as a voter, get to consider this.
With a self-funder, of any gender, voters don’t really have that same connection. And so that’s again the double-edge sword of self-funding: you can say, “I won’t be beholden to special interests” but then to also suggest that voters don’t have a right to consider how you choose to spend the money you do spend on getting elected? I don’t think that’s necessarily right.
Good luck on getting the media to be more gender-neutral in its critiquing the money and all other aspects of the race. Running for office is absolutely brutal.
I think it is clear that any and every means will be used to degrade women candidates because the male run corrupt political parties, corporate media and government want to continue their corrupt behaviors. They do not want to govern for The People and they don’t want any consumer power. They want to siphon off taxes and distribute them to their corrupt cronies.
When Corporate media do these behaviors we need to recognize them, call it out and make certain we do not subsidize these companies. That means you all should consider cutting the TV cable and watching only the shows you like from the internet instead of subsidizing the whole corporate culture with your cable payment.
I am from Washington State and Maria Cantwell, one of our 2 woman Senators, is also a self made Dotcom bazillionaire. She was widely accused of buying her Senate seat but people don’t care, we keep voting her in. And Meg Whitman is considered a National figure because California has actually produced a US President which does not settle well with people who think that if you aren’t from the north east and haven’t attended one of the very few approved educational institutions you aren’t qualified to be a leader. Meg is looked at as a possible Presidential candidate and she looks like a powerful matron who will not be easily cuntized by Democrats.
Oh and Also Meg is from the north east originally and did go to several of the Universities approved for American leadership by the ruling elitists. She will be a formidable Presidential candidate. For this reason the powers that be need to snuff out her power before it develops.
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