Rep. Johnson Donates Big to Pro-choice Republican Group
WASHINGTON, Nov. 2 — On Capitol Hill, money is to politics what gasoline is to a car: You need one to fuel the other. That could explain why Fifth District Republican Rep. Nancy Johnson both rakes in the dough and generously doles it out through her two political action committees (commonly called PACs).
One of Johnson’s PACs is Leadership Encouraging Excellence, or LEE, after her maiden name. Through LEE, Johnson garners funds for fellow Republicans and conservative interests. In the case of her longtime alliance with the group WISH List, she supports a network of Republicans whose mission is to fan out and shore up support for moderate female GOP challengers and endangered incumbents.
Well into the 2005-2006 fundraising cycle, Johnson is a leading donor to the Women in the Senate and House List, or WISH List, which helps finance Republican women who support abortion rights. Johnson’s LEE PAC has given $5,000 to the WISH List, according to Federal Election Commission records. Since the 1997-98 election cycle, she has given at least $11,000, according to PoliticalMoneyLine.org, an independent campaign finance watchdog.
“Nancy believes strongly in electing more women and moderate Republicans to Congress, that their voices and leadership are key to our shared agenda for job creation, affordable health care, environmental protection and national security,” said Johnson spokesman Brian Schubert.
Dubbing itself a “forward-thinking group of Republicans,” the WISH List identifies female potential leaders in the party and then aids their runs for office with money and training resources. But it is also the largest fundraising alliance for Republican women candidates who support women’s right to abortions.
“Our mission is to elect more pro-choice women at all levels,” said WISH President Pat Carpenter. “Nancy [Johnson] is certainly supportive of that.”
Carpenter called Johnson a “tremendous leader” for the organization’s cause and, more broadly, a supporter of moderate Republicans.
Since the group was founded in 1992, there has been a four-fold increase in the number of abortion-rights Republican women in the Senate and a 50 percent increase in the House, according to its Web-site. The group argues it’s no coincidence, but exactly how much influence the WISH List had in this development remains unclear.
One thing is clear: WISH has an impressive record of supporting candidates. During the 2003-04 election cycle, a majority of the 200 candidates WISH backed were elected.
In 1992, WISH helped elect a handful of prominent women, including Jennifer Dunn of Washington and Deborah Pryce of Ohio, past and current chairs of the House Republican Conference, the highest rank Republican women have reached in House GOP leadership. Another coup for the group occurred the following year when Christine Todd Whitman became New Jersey’s first woman governor.
In 1994, WISH helped seat both of Maine’s Republican Senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins.
While the group spends considerable resources on recruiting and electing women, they also are active during tight election races to help incumbents, as was the case with Johnson in 1998.
Lawmakers who support WISH do so in a variety of ways, Carpenter said. Aside from monetary donations, they will, for example, appear at fundraising and awareness events.
Johnson serves on the WISH honorary advisory board, which is largely a symbolic honor for lawmakers who donate their time and money.
WISH has raised about $528,000 this year through Sept. 30, according to records filed with the Federal Election Commission. The bulk of donations came from individual donors, though PACs contribute a fair share. The group now routinely raises $1 million annually. For the current cycle, WISH is second only to the Democrat-leaning EMILY’s List, upon which the WISH List was modeled, in raising the most funds for a political women’s group, according to OpenSecrets.org, another independent group that tracks Washington transactions.
