Delegates turn to internet to pay convention costs
Genevieve Mina hopes to be in Philadelphia next month as one of Alaska's youngest delegates to the Democratic National Convention - that is if the 20-year-old can raise the money to get here.
Genevieve Mina hopes to be in Philadelphia next month as one of Alaska's youngest delegates to the Democratic National Convention - that is, if the 20-year-old can raise the money to get here.
Mina, who is president of the College Democrats at the University of Alaska, set up an online fund-raising page to solicit donations to help cover costs of flights and lodging for convention week - all told, about $4,000.
"It'd be tough to pay out of my own pocket," Mina said from Anchorage. "It would pretty much wipe out everything I've saved for my future education."
Mina is one of about 500 delegates who are using GoFundMe to seek help getting to Philadelphia. Those using the fund-raising tool include a father of three from Guam, a schoolteacher from California, and a ward leader from Roxborough.
Most of the GoFundMe pages were set up by young supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders. The site also has about 100 posts from delegates headed to the Republican convention in Cleveland.
The national Democratic Party expects delegates largely to pay their own way. Elected officials are allowed to use campaign funds to pay for their travel.
Convention organizers estimate travel and hotel costs for the 4,800 delegates will be between $4,000 and $6,000 per delegate for the convention, which runs from July 25 to 28. Delegates are encouraged, but not required, to stay in the hotel assigned to their state delegation, which gathers each morning for breakfast and speakers, and to get daily tickets to the Wells Fargo Center.
"If you're not staying with your delegation at the hotel, you're missing 75 percent of what goes on," said Marcel Groen, chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.
He is not surprised by the fund-raising, particularly given the large number of young Sanders supporters.
"I'm sure, for the most part, Hillary delegates are more establishment-oriented and therefore may be older, may have more money," Groen said. "The beauty of our party is that our delegates are going to cross social, economic, diversity lines, our delegates look like the people of America, and that means some people don't have any money and they're still going to be delegates."
Jeannette Atchley, 27, a delegate from South Carolina who supports Sanders, said she is living paycheck to paycheck while working with children in the juvenile justice system. Atchley said she would drive up for the convention with the Hunger Games audio books to pass the time. She estimates gas, tolls, and parking will cost her about $500.
She's splitting the cost of her hotel room ($2,000 for the week) with another South Carolina Bernie delegate.
The Doubletree Hotel, where South Carolina, Louisiana, and Pennsylvania delegations will stay, is $400 a night with a five-night minimum, Atchley said. She couldn't help checking what the regular rate is.
"It's only $169 normally. I was shocked! Your hotels are cashing in on this," she said.
Atchley also tried BernieBNB.com, a website dedicated to connecting Sanders supporters with more affordable lodging.
Justin Adrian, a high school history teacher from Kansas City, supports Hillary Clinton. His stay at the Courtyard Marriot Downtown will run him $650 a night.
"I'm sharing a room, driving down, and hoping what I don't raise, my parents will chip in," he said.
The Kansas Democratic Party and the national teachers' union have contributed some money.
Not everyone seeking help lives out of state.
Lou Agre, a ward leader in Roxborough and a Sanders delegate for Pennsylvania, set up a GoFundMe page while he was on a conference call with convention organizers.
"They suggested it to you right on the call, 'Go open a page,' and I did it before the call was over," Agre said.
Agre could commute each day, but he's concerned about travel restrictions getting into town and the early call time each day - before 7 a.m. to gather and get credentialed.
Agre, a veteran of local politics, sent a few hundred fund-raising emails and said he had gotten donations from people he had not heard from in 40 years. As of Tuesday evening, he was only $500 away from his $3,500 mark.
Agre, 62, organizer and in-house counsel for Operating Engineers Local 542, has one son in college and one who graduated a few years ago. He's never been a delegate before, but signed up partly because he thought it would be more affordable with the convention in his home city.
"The whole reason I wanted to be a delegate was because I thought, 'It's going to be cheap, it's right here - a buck-80 each way on the subway,'" Agre said. "Wrong again. Story of my life."
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