Pro-Clinton Group Plans Event Focused on Gay and Lesbian Donors

The New York Times – by Amy Chozick

A “super PAC” supporting Hillary Rodham Clinton’s possible presidential campaign is reaching out to some of New York’s most powerful and wealthy gay and lesbian donors.

The group, Ready for Hillary, has built a name for itself with small-dollar grass-roots outreach and the selling of clever items like an iPhone case with the well-recognized image of Mrs. Clinton texting in dark sunglasses. But on April 7 the group will hold a higher-dollar event hosted by Jon Stryker, a billionaire philanthropist and Clinton donor, and featuring Gavin Newsom, the lieutenant governor of California and former mayor of San Francisco.  

Finance council co-chairman positions start at $25,000; a finance council membership costs $5,000; sponsorships are $1,000; and guests can attend for $500.

Those figures represent a stark change from the low-dollar fund-raising party that Ready for Hillary will host Thursday at the Boom Boom Room, a trendy Manhattan bar at the top of the Standard Hotel. Tickets for that event start at $20.16.

Ready for Hillary has prided itself on the type of grass-roots list building and data collecting that baffled Mrs. Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and partly contributed to Barack Obama’s victory. The group, which raised more than $4 million in 2013, capped its individual donations at $25,000.

Priorities USA, meanwhile, has emerged as the big-money political action committee that recently said it would throw its full support behind Mrs. Clinton should she decide to run.

The April 7 Ready for Hillary event is also notable in that it reaches out to some of the city’s wealthy lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender donors, some of whom still harbor animosity about the policies advanced by President Bill Clinton’s White House in the 1990s. They are still widely expected to support Mrs. Clinton.

Mr. Newsom is one of many politicians who have signed up to support Ready for Hillary, joining Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri and Jennifer Granholm, the former governor of Michigan.

Other hosts for the event include Robby Browne of the Corcoran Group, Charles Myers of Evercore Partners, and Bryan Eure and Bill White, whose 2011 wedding made headlines and featured Aretha Franklin singing “I Will Always Love you.”

http://mobile.nytimes.com/blogs/thecaucus/2014/03/20/pro-clinton-group-plans-event-focused-on-gay-and-lesbian-donors/

3 thoughts on “Pro-Clinton Group Plans Event Focused on Gay and Lesbian Donors

  1. “New York’s most powerful and wealthy gay and lesbian donors.”

    Powerful and wealthy? Since when are gays and lesbians powerful and wealthy?

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