When Melinda French Gates she ran the largest philanthropic foundation on the planet with her husband, Bill Gatesinsisted on staying out of politics. He was half of one of the most famous couples in USA and he didn’t want to generate negative reactions from governments around the world, not to mention confront Washington for backing someone who could lose.
But in 2021, that well-organized life exploded. Their divorce was a bomb and its consequences continue to resonate three years later.
Suddenly he received billions of dollars with which he could do whatever he wanted. This year he decided to resign from his eponymous foundation, which meant he could set his own agenda. And, after decades of carefully crafted neutrality, he did what he had wanted to do since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade (which eliminated the constitutional right to abortion): he entered politics fully.
At 60 years old, French Gates she has reinvented herself, surprisingly, as a rising Democratic megadonor. He has endorsed political candidates, donated more than $13 million to groups supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, had his team talk to Harris’ advisers about a joint event, and publicly defended abortion rights. , a topic he downplayed for decades because it was too politically sensitive.
According to people close to her, her transformation is due more to changing circumstances at home and in the world than to a moment of sudden inspiration. His separation from Gates and the foundation gave her independence, and the reversal of Roe spurred her to action.
“Now I can make the decision for myself whether or not to support abortion,” she said in a brief interview last month. Although she downplayed the divorce, she admitted that before “there were more considerations because I was the director of a foundation.”
Between the public and the private
French Gates has not always been the staunch defender of liberal values that she appears to be today. His recent enthusiasm for seven-figure political contributions is not part of his natural temperament. She insisted on the need to appear bipartisan when she was one of the leaders of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a risk-averse organization. Today, some Democrats privately complain that he didn’t adopt his new views sooner, during the rise of former President Donald Trump and the rollback of abortion rights.
For example, although French Gates He had a close relationship with Hillary Clinton, he did not endorse her for the Presidency in her race against Trump.
“Bill and I always keep private who we vote for in elections,” he said when asked before the 2016 election if he wanted to see Clinton win.
In the past, French Gates He even made modest donations to some political leaders who opposed expanding access to abortion, such as Republican legislators Elise Stefanik, representative of New York, and Shelley Moore Capito, senator of West Virginia.
But in recent years, he has greatly increased his donations to anonymous liberal funding groups that largely support Democrats, according to two people familiar with the details of these donations. And in this election cycle, these people say, she has become increasingly comfortable doing so openly and has given mega-donations to Democratic super political action committees, which are made public.
Asked if he regretted not helping Democrats resist Trump more in previous election cycles, French Gates He said no and that his “only regret” was not funding more candidates advocating for guaranteed paid family leave before President Joe Biden unsuccessfully pushed to include it in a 2021 bill.
That effort was a turning point for French Gates, said Sondra Goldschein, CEO of Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy, whose super political action committee received $3 million from her this cycle. French Gates and his team “saw that we had a political problem and that political problems require political solutions,” Goldschein said.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which struck down the constitutional right to abortion, came a year later.
Greater involvement
French Gates has begun to expand its political presence. This year, for example, he hired a former Biden political aide, Natalie Montelongo, to help with political donations. More importantly, she has been influenced by two of her children, who have asked her to further deepen her support for Democrats in this election, including in a recent conversation, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation.
His son, Rory, is an ambitious Democratic donor who has consulted political technology experts and attended a meeting of the Democracy Alliance, a network of progressive mega-donors who coordinate their donations. French GateHe recalled that, since high school, “he helped me open my eyes and taught me a lot.”
Her youngest daughter, Phoebe, recently graduated from Stanford and has a large social media following focused on abortion rights. She makes her own six-figure political contributions, with the help of personal political advisors.
When French Gates began to move, word spread. Over the past two years, Democratic fundraisers have sought to engage with their team in what some of them have described as a “frenzy.” Few new liberal megadonors had emerged since the early days of the Trump era, so Democratic fundraisers began to see her as one of the few new sources of capital.
Following Harris’ rise to the Democratic nomination, French Gates got even more involved. He donated close to the legal maximum, $929,600, to Harris’ campaign in July, according to two people familiar with his activities. French Gates has also held talks with Harris’ campaign office about holding an event with her on the care economy — policies aimed at helping parents and other caregivers — according to two people with knowledge of the conversations.
French Gates and Pivotal Ventures, her de facto family office with a mission to expand women’s power and influence, have reported more than $10 million in contributions to federal groups and candidates this cycle. Most of the money has gone to groups focused on women’s issues, such as the political action committee of Campaign for a Family Friendly Economy by Goldschein and Women Vote!a super political action committee affiliated with EMILYs List, who supports Democratic candidates who support abortion rights. two years ago, French Gates had never made a federal donation declared of more than 35 thousand 800 dollars. He then made 14 in the next two years.
Pivotal Ventures has also made significant unreported contributions to some political non-profit organizations. His company gave one million dollars to each of the CFFE nonprofits, Care in Action and Galvanize Actiona pro-Harris nonprofit focused on women voters, according to a person with knowledge of the donations, plus an unknown amount to a nonprofit affiliated with Future Forward, the leading pro-Harris super political action committee .
Asked how much money he would spend on the 2024 election, French Gates said he was “not going to say a number.”
A controversial topic
She has also experienced a late reinvention on the issue of abortion.
In 2012, she gave a high-profile speech on women’s issues at a TED conference. There he advocated expanding access to contraception around the world, but intentionally downplayed the issue of abortion. “If we want to move forward on this issue, we must be very clear about what our agenda is,” he said. “We are not going to talk about abortion.”
Former officials of the Gates Foundation They said the speech caused some distress among their staff. Some of its members wondered if French Gateswho is a practicing Catholic and grew up in the South, was privately opposed to abortion rights. In a 2014 blog post, which has since been removed from the Gates Foundationsaid that she herself “had problems” with the topic and had “decided not to go into it publicly.”
Some feminist leaders have struggled to square the reputation she was cultivating — as an advocate for women and their health — with her unwillingness to directly confront the issue.
“It was an emblematic example of abortion stigma and how it manifested itself in people who identified as feminists,” said Erin Matson, who runs an abortion access organization called Reproaction. “It was really a slap in the face to see her attack abortion at that time.”
Even today he annoyingly avoids using the word “abortion.”
French Gates showed little regret for not pushing harder for abortion rightstaking into account what would happen with Roe.
“I think the decision we made at the foundation was absolutely the right one and the way I used my voice in that matter,” he said. “I think a woman should have the choice whether or not to have a child, but when there is a gap of hundreds of millions of dollars in contraceptives around the world, a young woman doesn’t even have the choice.”
Even since the overturning of Roe, French Gates has not invested money in initiatives to help women have abortions, But it has funded services like litigation to expand access overall, frustrating abortion rights leaders.
“She’s concerned about rights, not access,” said Tracy Weitz, who used to oversee abortion-focused philanthropy at the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. “It bothers her that her grandchildren have fewer constitutional rights than she does. That is very far from wanting to help someone have an abortion.”
Daniella Ballou-Aares, director of the Leadership Now Project, a pro-democracy business group that received money from Pivotal Ventures, said French Gates had opened up about what she called an “evolution.” Earlier this year, French Gates hosted a meeting with a dozen businesswomen who stressed the need to use political donations to complement their nonpartisan philanthropy.
“It’s a change,” Ballou-Aares said, “and I think it’s necessary.”
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