When Melinda French Gates was running the world’s largest philanthropy with her husband Bill Gates, she insisted on staying on the sidelines of politics. She is one half of America’s most famous couple and didn’t want to invite backlash from governments around the world, let alone put herself at odds with Washington by supporting someone who might lose.
Then, in 2021, that regular life exploded.
Her divorce from Gates was shocking. And even three years later, the effects are still reverberating. She suddenly has billions of dollars of her own and can do whatever she wants with it. This year, she decided to leave the foundation that bears her name, meaning she can set her own agenda. And after decades of carefully planned neutrality, she did what she wanted to do ever since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. She dove headfirst into the world of politics.
At 60 years old, French Gates has surprisingly reinvented himself as a powerful megadonor to the Democratic Party. She has endorsed political candidates, donated more than $13 million to organizations supporting Vice President Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign, had her team consult with Harris’ advisers on joint events, and advocated for abortion rights publicly. This is an issue she has downplayed for decades. It’s too difficult politically.
Those close to her say French Gates’ transformation is less about a serendipitous moment than a response to changing circumstances at home and in the world. Gates’ break with the foundation gave her a sense of independence, and Roe’s reversal spurred her into action.
“Now I can decide for myself whether I support it or not,” she said in a brief interview last month. Although she downplayed her role in the divorce, she admitted up front that “there were more considerations because I was the chairman of the foundation.”
Ms. French Gates was not always as fervent a defender of liberal values as she is today. Her newfound enthusiasm for seven-figure political donations is not part of her natural nature. As one of the leaders of the risk-averse Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, she emphasized the need to be bipartisan. Today, some Democrats privately complain that she didn’t come to a new perspective sooner, amid the rise of former President Donald J. Trump and the rollback of abortion rights.
For example, French Gates had a strong relationship with Hillary Clinton, but did not support her as a presidential candidate in the race against Trump.
When asked before the 2016 election whether she wanted to see Clinton win, she said, “Bill and I have always kept secret who we vote for in elections.”
In the past, French Gates has joined some female politicians who oppose expanding abortion access, including Representative Elise Stefanik of New York and Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia (both Republicans). I have also made a small donation.
But in recent years, French Gates has significantly increased his donations to liberal black-finance groups that primarily support Democrats, according to two people familiar with the donations. And this election cycle, people say she’s become increasingly comfortable doing so publicly, making large donations to Democratic super PACs that have been made public.
Asked if he had any second thoughts about not helping Democrats further resist Trump in previous election cycles, French Gates said he had no thoughts, saying, “The only He said his “regret” was not giving more money to candidates who wanted guaranteed paid families. We should leave before President Biden’s efforts to include it in his 2021 bill fail.
The effort was a turning point for Ms. French Gates, said Sondra Goldschein, executive director of the Campaign for a Family-Friendly Economy, whose super PAC received $3 million from her this season. French Gates and his team “recognized that we have a political problem, and political problems require political solutions,” Goldschein said.
The Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Medical Institution, overturning the constitutional right to abortion, came a year later.
French Gates has begun to expand his political footprint, including hiring former Biden political aide Natalie Montelongo this year to help with political donations. More importantly, people familiar with the discussions say she has been influenced by her two children, including recent conversations with them, to deepen her support for Democrats in this election. He said he asked her to dig deeper.
Her son, Rory, is an ambitious Democratic donor who has attended meetings of the Democracy Alliance, a network of progressive megadonors that consults political technology experts and coordinates contributions. French Gates recalled that she “helped open my eyes and further educated me” from her high school days.
Her youngest daughter, Phoebe, just graduated from Stanford University and has a large following on social media centered around abortion rights. She has also made six-figure political contributions herself, with the help of a personal political advisor.
Once French Gates took action, word spread. Democratic fundraisers have been seeking introductions to her team in recent years in what some Democratic fundraisers described as a “frenzy.” With few other new liberal mega-donors emerging since the early days of the Trump administration, Democratic fundraisers began to look to French Gates as one of the few new sources of money.
French Gates became more involved after Harris emerged as the Democratic nominee. She donated nearly the legal limit of $929,600 to the Harris campaign in July, according to two people familiar with her activities. French Gates also discussed holding a campaign event with Harris on the care economy, policies aimed at supporting parents and other caregivers, two people familiar with the talks said. It is said that there was a discussion.
French Gates and her de facto family office, Pivotal Ventures, with a mission to expand the power and influence of women, have donated more than $10 million to federal organizations and candidates this cycle. revealed. Most of the money went to groups focused on women’s issues, including Goldschein’s CFFE PAC and Women Vote!, a super PAC under EMILYs List that supports female Democratic candidates who support abortion rights. Donated. Two years ago, French Gates never publicly disclosed more than $35,800 in donations to the federal government. She then made 14 over the next two years.
Pivotal Ventures has also made large, undisclosed donations to some political nonprofit organizations. Her company has donated $1 million each to nonprofit organizations CFFE, Care in Action and Galvanize Action, according to people familiar with the donations. The group, a pro-Harris nonprofit focused on women voters, also donated an unspecified amount to nonprofits affiliated with Future Forward. , the main pro-Harris super PAC.
Asked how much money he plans to spend on the 2024 election, French Gates said, “I’m not going to give you a number.”
In her later years, she similarly reconsidered the issue of abortion.
Back in 2012, she gave a high-profile speech on women’s issues at the TED conference, pushing for expanded access to contraceptives around the world, but thoroughly minimizing the topic of abortion. . “If we’re going to make progress on this issue, we need to be clear about what our agenda is,” she said. “We’re not talking about abortion.”
Former Gates Foundation officials say the speech caused some unrest among staff, including one in which French Gates, a devout Catholic who grew up in the South, personally opposed abortion rights. Some people said they wondered if there were any. In a 2014 blog post (which has since been removed from the Gates Foundation’s website), French Gates said he himself had “struggled” with the issue and had “decided not to engage publicly with it.” said.
Some feminist leaders have struggled to polarize the reputation she has cultivated as a champion of women and women’s health, given her reluctance to directly confront the issue.
“She was an iconic example of the stigma against abortion and how it manifests itself in people who identify as feminists,” said Erin Mattson, who runs the abortion access organization ReproAction. “It was really shocking to see her so harshly condemning abortion at the time.”
Even now, Ms. French Gates strictly avoids using the word “abortion.”
Ms French-Gates revealed that she had some regrets about not being a more vocal advocate for abortion rights in light of what happened in Ms Roe’s case.
“I believe that the decision we made at the foundation was absolutely the right decision and that I have spoken out on this issue,” she said. “I believe that women should be the ones deciding whether and when to have children, but with billions of dollars in disparities in contraceptives around the world, young girls are not even given that choice. there is no.”
Since Roe was overturned, Ms. French Gates has not funneled funds to efforts to help individual women obtain abortions, but rather to litigation and other services aimed at expanding access more generally. , which has frustrated some abortion rights leaders.
“She’s worried about rights. She’s not worried about access,” said Tracy Weitz, who oversaw abortion-focused philanthropy at the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation. “She’s angry that her grandchildren have less constitutional rights than she does. That’s a far cry from wanting to help someone get an abortion.”
Daniela Barrow-Arles, president of the Leadership Now Project, a pro-democracy business group funded by Pivotal Ventures, said French Gates spoke openly about what she called “evolution.” . Earlier this year, French Gates arranged to hear from more than a dozen female business leaders who emphasized the need to leverage political giving to complement nonpartisan philanthropy.
“This is change,” Barrow-Arles said, “and I think it’s needed.”
