Small-Biz Moms Emerge as Key to 2 Campaigns

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The New York Sun

While security moms and Nascar dads dominate this year’s political debate, a less prominent demographic is also seeking time in the limelight. Call them small-biz moms.


The campaigns of President Bush and Senator Kerry are courting America’s 15 million female business owners to an unprecedented extent. Advocates for those women welcome the attention and say it could pay off in November.


“It’s really the first time that both campaigns are taking us and the potential we can bring to them seriously,” said Barbara Kasoff, co-founder of a women’s business group, Women Impacting Public Policy.


As the organization holds a strategy session in Washington today, it is scheduled to hear from two well-known female lawmakers. Senator Clinton is to speak on behalf of Mr. Kerry, Senator Hutchison of Texas on behalf of the president.


Both presidential candidates have joined in national conference calls with the businesswomen. Ms. Kasoff’s group, known as WIPP, even had the clout to score a White House reception, which took place last evening.


A survey released last week by a competing group, the National Association of Women Business Owners, found that Mr. Kerry had 56% support and Mr. Bush had 40%. That organization surveyed only its own members.


A poll done last year for WIPP showed that 88% of female business owners report that they vote in most or all elections – a percentage that far outstrips the turnout of the general population. The survey, taken before Mr. Kerry won the nomination, indicated that these women, like other business owners, lean Republican but are open to persuasion.


“Our poll definitely showed women entrepreneurs being the swing vote in 2004, based on the fact that so many women have started up small businesses,” said another co-founder of WIPP, Terry Neese.


Ms. Neese, who owns a personnel agency in Oklahoma City, said the research also demonstrated that women who support a candidate will donate money and convince friends, family members and business contacts to fall in line.


“Our voice is very persuasive,” she said. “We’re trusted and we’re viewed as having a lot of integrity.”


Ms. Neese, a Republican who heads up the Bush campaign’s “W Stands for Women” effort, was not reticent about acknowledging that women in the business world do things their own way.


“We make decisions differently. We run our businesses differently,” she said. “I’m not saying we are more compassionate than our male counterparts, but because we are women we do more multitasking.”


Ms. Neese said women who are juggling commitments to business and family have been attracted by Mr. Bush’s efforts to change overtime rules to promote so-called flex time.


Ms. Kasoff, a Democrat who owns a public-policy strategy firm in San Francisco, said health care is of greater concern to women in business than it is to businessmen.


“We care a great deal about providing health care to all employees,” she said.


Ms. Neese said her group’s members embrace Mr. Bush’s plans to encourage small businesses to band together to buy insurance. Ms. Kasoff said, however, that Mr. Kerry’s proposal to have the federal government absorb costs of catastrophic health coverage will have a more dramatic impact on the ability of small-business owners to offer medical insurance.


“It’s not a stopgap method,” Ms. Kasoff said of the Democrat’s proposal. “He has a plan that I think can actually help lower our costs.”


Female business owners also have more parochial interests. They want to maintain and expand government programs, run by the Small Business Administration and other agencies, that give preferences to small businesses run by women.


“We are just beginning to do a lot of federal government contracting,” said Ms. Neese. In the past few years, the businesswomen’s organization has fended off efforts by some in the Bush administration to scale back the preference programs. Ms. Kasoff credits Mr. Kerry with preserving the special benefits for women-run businesses.


“He’s gone to bat and said you cannot do that, “Ms. Kasoff said. “He is a staunch, staunch supporter of these programs. … Any turnaround in the administration’s policy has occurred with his help.”


While touting the influence of their demographic group, both of WIPP’s leaders acknowledged that business-related issues will probably take a back seat this year to concerns about terrorism and the war in Iraq.


“You cannot look at your bottom line and ignore every other issue that surrounds it, “Ms. Kasoff said. “We’re not in that kind of world right now.”


The New York Sun

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