Democrats turn to black voters for donations

CHARLESTON, S.C. -- For decades, Democrats have counted on African-Americans for their votes. Now the party wants their money.

Driven by new campaign finance restrictions and a desire to shore up a traditional constituency, Democrats are increasingly targeting black voters for campaign donations, say fund-raisers and party activists.

"People are starting to realize that minority participation in the election process cannot be relegated to get-out-the-vote. It really is a new kind of power" for African-Americans, said Stephen Benjamin, a Columbia attorney who two years ago ran for South Carolina attorney general. Benjamin, an African-American, has used his personal network to raise money for Senator John F. Kerry, pulling in an estimated $30,000 to $40,000 for the Democratic contender at a house party in September.

The appeal of the party's seven presidential candidates to African-Americans gets an important test Tuesday in South Carolina, because black voters could make up nearly half the turnout in the first Southern state to hold a primary. Missouri and Delaware, which vote the same day, also have large black populations.

While Democratic operatives have long wrangled big-money contributions from wealthy African-American business leaders, the party is now reaching out to smaller donors, particularly young black professionals who, fund-raisers note, are a growing demographic group in urban areas of the South.

The trend represents a maturing of the relationship between Democrats and African-Americans, who in earlier campaigns might only have been approached in late October by a nominee eager to turn out the black vote, party activists say. Not only does the enhanced fund-raising effort swell Democratic coffers in a post-campaign finance reform world, but it literally invests African-Americans in the political process and increases their influence, Democratic officials say.

"We now realize that this is part of the game, that this is how the game is played. Certainly, the ability to contribute to anyone's bottom line always gets people's attention," said Lamell McMorris, a Washington fund-raiser who has raised more than $100,000 for the Democratic Party, largely from other African-Americans.

Party officials and fund-raisers say they have no hard numbers on contributions from African-Americans, since they do not break down donations by race. But McMorris, founder of the Perennial Strategy Group, estimates the amount that African-Americans have donated to Democrats has doubled in the past decade.

In October, Democrats raised a reported $100,000, much of it from young African-Americans, at a hip-hop fund-raiser at Dream, a Washington, D.C., nightclub.

"We realize that it's not enough just to mobilize in the traditional sense. Some of us need to begin to impact the political process from a donor standpoint, from a finance standpoint," McMorris said.

In 1988, supporters of Massachusetts Governor Michael S. Dukakis led one of the earliest drives to raise money for a Democratic candidate from black donors. Ronald A. Homer, chief executive officer of Access Capital Strategies of Cambridge, said he and other black supporters of Dukakis from the Boston area raised more than $1 million from African-Americans across the country before Dukakis was nominated that summer.

"There was a targeted effort to raise money from African-Americans, and it was enough to count," said Homer, who was then president and chief executive officer of Boston Bank of Commerce.

Republicans believe they can make inroads among black voters -- and appear to have made some gains between the 2000 and 2002 elections. But the GOP is not yet targeting African-Americans as a donor base, said Pamela Mantis, who does minority outreach for the Republican National Committee.

"We're still in the process of engaging African-Americans and asking them for their vote, asking them to vote Republican," Mantis said. "We don't target specific groups. We target all donors." African-Americans still overwhelmingly vote Democratic, but studies suggest that support may be eroding among younger blacks. Fewer than half of African-Americans between 18 and 34 identify themselves as Democrats, although they still tend to vote for Democratic candidates, according to an analysis by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, a Washington research group that focuses on African-American issues. (The same poll showed 35 percent identify themselves as independents.)

Democrats now are trying to shore up their support among black voters, and asking African-Americans to open their checkbooks is part of that effort, party officials said. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has shored up its efforts to reach out to blacks, in part because of complaints from voters that the candidates paid little attention to minorities until right before the election, a committee spokeswoman said.

The Democratic National Committee, meanwhile, has a project to expand its list of "hard money" donors -- people willing to make contributions of up to the legal limit of $2,000 per candidate or $10,000 per party committee -- to offset the loss of "soft money." The Supreme Court recently upheld a campaign finance law that bans such unlimited contributions to parties from wealthy individuals, corporations, and labor unions. Building up a database of black potential donors is part of that project, officials said.

"I think a lot of it had to do with campaign finance reform and the realization that they had to expand the number of donors. It's easier to get quick $25 to $50 donors," said Katreice Banks, a lobbyist and former Democratic party official.

Federal campaigns are still overwhelmingly funded by donors from heavily white areas, according to "Color of Money," a study by Public Campaign, the Fannie Lou Hamer Project, and the William C. Velasquez Institute. "If you look at communities as a whole, African-American and Latino communities are simply not players. It is basically an all-white game," said Nick Nyhart, Public Campaign's executive director.

But the study looked at donations of $200 and above, and did not account for black donors who live in white-dominated ZIP codes. And party officials say it is not just bigger donations they are seeking, but the increased involvement of African-Americans earlier in campaigns. A voter who gives even $20 to a party or campaign is more likely to volunteer or vote, analysts and party activists said.

While the Democratic National Committee must give up the unlimited, massive donations once made by such prominent African-Americans as Robert Johnson, the chairman and CEO of Black Entertainment Television, the party can help increase participation by a pivotal voter group by soliciting donations from younger blacks, said Ron Lester, a Democratic pollster who is African-American.

"What the Democrats are trying to do with younger black voters is kind of like what the Republican Party is trying to do with its base," Lester said. "If they are going to be players, if they are going to be at the table, they need to contribute."

Susan Milligan can be reached at milligan@globe.com.