Meet Karla Jurvetson, the Bay Area megadonor who helped make 2018 the ‘year of the woman’

Nov. 25--LOS ALTOS -- In the year of the woman, she has quickly become one of the most influential women in political fundraising -- but don't worry if you've never heard of Karla Jurvetson.

As a Stanford undergraduate, she went door-to-door for Rep. Anna Eshoo, handing out VCR tapes of Eshoo discussing her candidacy. More recently, she volunteered for Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign and raised money for Democrats.

But it wasn't until President Trump's victory that a "shell-shocked" Jurvetson, a Los Altos Hills psychiatrist and the ex-wife of a prominent venture capital investor, found herself getting more deeply involved in politics: She gave $6.9 million to Democratic candidates and causes over the last two years, launching herself from obscurity to one of the top political donors in the country.

While 2018 was a record year for women candidates, with at least 102 winning election to the U.S. House, female donors like Jurvetson also made history behind the scenes. Women gave at least $1.01 billion to federal political campaigns and committees over the last two years, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics.

That's the largest amount of any midterm election cycle, and more than double the $434 million that female donors gave during the last midterms in 2014. (The total is surely higher, as campaigns don't have to report all small-dollar donations individually.) A larger portion of the total money given, 30 percent, also came from women, up from 27 percent four years ago.

The increasing influence of female donors -- through writing big checks or sending grassroots sums of $5 or $10 -- comes as debates around gender have fueled some of the country's biggest recent political moments, from the Women's March to the #MeToo movement to Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's contentious confirmation hearing.

"Women have gained enough economic power and political power so we can translate our frustration into action," Jurvetson, a Palo Alto native, said in an interview last week. "I feel like it's our moral duty, if we're not going to run ourselves, to support the women who are brave enough to put their name on the ballot."

Raising the big sums necessary to compete in high-profile elections has long been one of the biggest hurdles preventing more women from running for office, said Debbie Walsh, the director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University.

"Women tell us it's harder for them to raise that money," Walsh said. If more female donors give to female candidates, she said, "that has real potential to encourage more women to run."

Jurvetson, who talks about candidates, polls and districts with the enthusiasm of a veteran strategist, had donated to campaigns in the past. But she vastly scaled up after Trump's election, focusing on congressional races around the country and giving mostly but not exclusively to female candidates such as Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Stacey Abrams of Georgia and Sharice Davids of Kansas. She also funded voter registration and turnout efforts among women.

This cycle, she became the third highest female donor in the country to federal political campaigns and committees after Miriam Adelson, the wife of casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson, who gave more than $55 million to GOP Super PACs over the last two years, and Deborah Simon, the daughter of an Indiana shopping mall magnate, who's given millions to Democratic causes, according to the latest Federal Election Commission records.

Jurvetson was also one of California's biggest donors, coming in after former hedge fund chief Tom Steyer, LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, and developer George Marcus.

Now, she spends "way more" time each week researching campaigns, organizing fundraisers and fielding calls from candidates than she does on her psychiatry practice, which she runs from a cozy office in downtown Los Altos.

Jurvetson, 52, is separated and has filed for divorce from her husband Steve Jurvetson, who left his prominent venture capital firm DFJ last year amid allegations of sexual misconduct, which he has denied.

In a Silicon Valley twist, her largest donation -- a $5.4 million gift to Women Vote!, a SuperPAC run by abortion rights group EMILY's List that supported female candidates -- was made in stock of the Chinese tech company Baidu.

"As Gloria Steinem said, seeing money go to have a positive social impact is more rewarding than seeing it accumulate in the bank," Jurvetson said.

The impact of female donors seems likely to grow in 2020, when more women could run credible presidential campaigns than ever before, including Sens. Kamala Harris of California, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota.

During the 2018 election cycle, both Warren and Gillibrand raised the majority of their funds from women for the first time in either's Senate career, according to CRP. Harris had nearly twice as many female donors as male donors, although 54.4 percent of the roughly $14.7 million she raised in individual itemized donations came from men, the center found. (She raised much of her most recent haul in smaller donations.)

Donors like Jurvetson will be in high demand over the next two years. She hosted Warren for a fundraiser at her Los Altos Hills house last month, and she's also met Gillibrand and Klobuchar as well as former Vice President Joe Biden and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey. She says she hasn't made up her mind on whom to support for president, and hopes to see a competitive primary.

"Women disproportionately were the activists, the volunteers, the people who drove change" in the 2016 and 2018 elections, Jurvetson said, arguing that it made sense for the party's presidential nominee to be "someone who really excites the base, instead of just a boring candidate who's been there forever."

More women giving to candidates could lead to a sea change in politics, said Los Angeles strategist Rose Kapolczynski, who ran former Sen. Barbara Boxer's political campaigns. During Boxer's first election to the Senate in 1992, she said, the campaign worked to recruit as many women donors as men, an effort that helped her defeat her male rivals.

"When women make more donations, more women candidates become viable," Kapolczynski said. "A first-time woman candidate for Congress has to prove herself, and if women donors are willing to take a chance on her, that can give her campaign the opportunity it needs."

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