Musicians band together for Kerry campaignA week after signing on as John Kerry's national deputy political director, Lara Bergthold flew to New York to meet a key power broker. This supporter didn't just have deep pockets. Rolling Stone magazine founder Jann Wenner had John Mellencamp's phone number.
Tonight, Bergthold will be at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan as Mellencamp, Dave Matthews, and a star-studded bill play the exclusive concert Wenner organized for Kerry. And this show is just a piece of what has been an unprecedented grass-roots fund-raising campaign. As Kerry tries to catch up with President Bush's money machine, he's getting help from a new breed of protest player. These musicians don't just preach peace and love. They understand the importance of soft money, negative ads, and the almighty war chest. "A lot of these musicians didn't participate in the past," says Nikki Columbus, a New York-based Democrat who in April helped found Concerts for Kerry, a coalition coordinating a half-dozen shows each week. "This time, even the most idealistic person understands that there's only so many people John Kerry can reach if he's traveling by bus. You need money to get out that message." The slate of performers raising money for Kerry cuts across genres and geographic regions. Country musicians as prominent as Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell have held "Kerry-oke" nights at a club in Nashville. Christian McBride, Charlie Hunter, and a who's who of jazz players raised $50,000 with a gig in New York in June. Also last month, Boston baritone David Kravitz and a group of classical musicians brought in $22,000 with a show at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge. "I always vote, I always show up on election day," says Kravitz. "I have not been moved to act before. It's because of what Bush has turned out to stand for. He has become this hard-core extremist, and the people in his administration are, it seems to me, so far beyond what the country thought it was signing up for." Concerts for Kerry has organized close to 40 concerts, including three at rock clubs in Boston. The organization's website, concertsforkerry.org, includes links to help bands set up pro-Kerry gigs. As of this week, Concerts for Kerry reported having raised $114,000. The Radio City gig, though, is an altogether different animal. For $25,000 -- the highest-priced ticket -- a Kerry supporter gets to hang with the candidate after the concert. A similar concert in Los Angeles in June raised $5 million. "I feel a tremendous amount of energy on the part of the music community that I've never felt before," says Wenner. "There's a certain urgency to this. People do not like this guy Bush. They're afraid of what's going on." Republicans say they're not concerned. They note that there's nothing new about entertainers backing Democrats. "I have Barbra Streisand's Christmas album," says Christine Iverson, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee. "It's a classic, and she has a beautiful singing voice. But Barbra Streisand isn't going to influence my political beliefs." Streisand's role, though, has been to raise money, not stump for voters. In June, she and Neil Diamond sang "You Don't Bring Me Flowers" in Los Angeles during the first of Wenner's two Kerry concerts. Kerry's staff says that most of the fund-raising gigs have been lower profile. "I almost can't keep track of the shows," says Bergthold. "We don't have anything to do with it, so those things are coming to us from around the country. Sometimes we just get an envelope in the mail: `We had a house party, and I know so and so, and they came, and here's the money.' " Two important factors have created this new fund-raising climate. Earlier this year, Kerry, unlike former nominees Al Gore and Bill Clinton, rejected federal matching funds. That meant Kerry could raise unlimited money before this month's Democratic National Convention. Many of the groups, including Concerts for Kerry, were developed by a loosely defined coalition of like-minded musicians. They didn't file with the Internal Revenue Service. They simply booked clubs and delivered the ticket-sale money to the campaign.
Also, Kerry has benefited from the rise of 527 groups, named for a section of tax code. Congress banned candidates from directly receiving soft money after the last presidential election. But 527 groups can receive those unregulated contributions and use that cash to push their causes. As it turns out, the majority of 527 giving goes to left-leaning organizations, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Punk voter.com, one of these groups, includes Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong and Warped tour founder Kevin Lyman. Its mission: to "expose the chaotic policies of George Bush Jr. and his current adminsitration [sic]." Kerry's never been confused with the original rock 'n' roll president, Clinton, who played saxophone on "Arsenio Hall," considered "boxers or briefs" on MTV, and became famous for his embrace of excess. But there's no denying Kerry's musical roots. In the early '60s, he played bass for his prep school band, the Electras. These days he favors an acoustic guitar, which he can sometimes be spotted strumming during campaign events. The candidate's links to the musical elite emerged in February when Coldplay's Chris Martin, accepting a Grammy, endorsed Kerry from the stage. In April, Musicians United to Win Without War, which included rap mogul Russell Simmons, Outkast, the Kronos Quartet, and more than 50 others, took out a full-page ad in The New York Times slamming the Bush administration. Some left-leaning musicians are choosing not to raise money for a candidate but rather to encourage young people to vote. They include Alanis Morissette, who signed on for Rock the Vote, the premier youth-targeted voter registration organization. "I have my own personal preference," says Morissette. "At the same time, my fantasy is to empower other people so that they can make their own choices." Even the supposedly nonpartisan Rock the Vote has strong links to the Democrats. Its tour is expected to feature the Dixie Chicks, and its president, Jehmu Greene, is a former Southern political director at the DNC who worked for the Clinton-Gore campaign in 1996. Rock the Vote has nearly doubled its budget since 2000 and intends to spend $6 million this year. During the convention, the organization visits Boston for two shows, one at Avalon featuring DJ Paul Van Dyk, the other at the Roxy featuring Maroon 5. It's when Kerry accepts the party's nomination that his musical friends will have to shift gears. At that point, the candidate will receive $75 million in federal funds. He loses the ability to raise private money, changing the strategy from fund-raising to conversion. "We'll be doing events around in the country, in battleground states," says Bergthold. "Jon Bon Jovi is willing to travel for us and take his guitar and sing on the side of the road for us. He plays very well in middle America. The more surrogates you have, the more you can reach people."
Geoff Edgers can be reached at gedgers@globe.com. © Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
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