Donald Trump’s Problem With Wealthy Women

He says he’ll “be phenomenal to the women,” but female donors aren’t buying that.

Rex Features/AP

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Donald Trump may believe he has special insight into the concerns of American women. (Recently, he declared that women might like to wear burkas to save time on makeup.) But the women of America aren’t buying it. Or, at least, they’re not buying into his campaign.

Much of Trump’s presidential effort has been self-financed, but he has raised approximately $1.1 million from donors who gave more than $200 each. Only a small fraction of these funders have been women, according to a new analysis. OpenSecrets.org (where I used to work) has examined the donations to the major presidential candidates, using databases of names to determine which candidates have pocketed the most campaign dollars from women, and Trump is at the bottom of the list of GOP contenders.

The vast majority of political donors are, and always have been, men. In the 2014 midterm elections, OpenSecrets calculates, only 27.1 percent of donations to federal candidates came from women. Democrats are traditionally slightly better than Republicans when it comes to attracting female donors. But though there are more women in the United States than men, women are greatly underrepresented in the donor class. In 2012, 44.1 percent of the $200-plus donors for President Barack Obama were women; a mere 28.3 percent of Mitt Romney’s contributors were women.

This year, several GOP candidates are doing better than Romney did on this front. Jeb Bush has raised more than 32 percent of his money from women. Of Ben Carson’s fundraising from $200-and-above donors, 38.8 percent came from women. (Carson raises a lot of money from under-$200 donors, and records are not kept for these contributors.) Other GOP candidates, including Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, and the lone female candidate, Carly Fiorina, have each collected at least 31 percent of their $200-plus hauls from women. Rand Paul, whose overall fundraising has been anemic, has picked up merely 22.1 percent from female donors.

Trump, though, is the worst. Just 18.4 percent of his $200-plus donations have come from women. And Trump has fared particularly poorly among female donors who contribute the maximum amount: Only 24 women have given Trump more than $2,700.

Trump’s sharp skew toward male donors surprises OpenSecrets’ research director, Sarah Bryner.

Trump has promised to “be phenomenal to the women” if elected. So far, few women have put their money where his mouth is.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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