As primary nears, candidates wonder, 'What do women want?'

PORTLAND - Vera Katz is a living legend in Oregon politics, the first female speaker of the Oregon House and the longtime mayor of Portland, so revered that a smiling statue of her watches over the joggers, cyclists and children who cruise along the banks of the Willamette River.

State Rep. Sara Gelser of Corvallis is a mother of four and an up-and-comer in the Oregon Legislature, one of the under-35 set who emerged in her first session as a strong voice for children's health issues, already a leader in her caucus and one of its most passionate progressives.

So, which one is the Hillary Clinton supporter, and who's for Barack Obama?

The easy answer would be that Katz is for Clinton, and Gelser's pulling for Obama.

Guess again.

"I'm a woman. I'm mature. I'm white. And I'm for Obama,'' Katz giddily declared at a recent, high-powered gathering of Women for Obama at the Benson Hotel in Portland.

Now, listen to Gelser, at a recent rally in Albany headlined by former President Bill Clinton: "Senator Clinton has a chance of making change, the ability to lead, and the country will have its first opportunity to have a president who puts kids, poverty and families front-and-center.''

Gelser and Katz are footsoldiers in the intense battle for the hearts, minds and votes of Oregon women that's being waged as the May 20 primary draws ever closer.

And it's not just the Clinton and Obama campaigns, though their efforts are certainly the most concentrated and intense. The trend continues all the way down the Democratic ticket: U.S. Senate hopeful Jeff Merkley's television and radio commercials, for example, linger over his commitment to abortion rights.

Meanwhile, his chief rival for the nomination, Portland lawyer and activist Steve Novick, is running his quirky ads during programs like Oprah and Dancing with the Stars that have robust female audiences.

It's not hard to get to the root of the push, particularly for the Democrats: Women make up about 56.6 percent of Oregon's registered Democrats, while men are only 41 percent of the party's voters, according to Fred Huette, a database manager who crunches the numbers for progressive groups in Oregon and beyond.

When it comes to Republicans the reverse is true, Huette said; 49.3 percent of registered Republicans are male, while 48.8 percent are female.

The totals do not add up to 100 percent mostly because of a small number of voters with gender-neutral names who defy classification.

The gender gap exists nationally, but it's even more pronounced in Oregon than it is in most states, said strategists for both the Clinton and Obama campaigns.

For Democrats, for example, the percentage of registered voters who are female usually hovers around 54 percent. The gap has been magnified this year by Clinton's candidacy, the first time a woman has come so close to winning a major party's nomination.

Plus, since both Clinton and Obama have well-documented difficulties with lower-income, white males, they are doubly counting on women to make up the difference.

Clay Haynes, Clinton's state director in Oregon, said the state is one of the few to have its own women's outreach director, and has made it a point to have campaign workers present where women might congregate, from the Oregon Zoo on a sunny Sunday to kid-friendly restaurants around Portland.

Every Wednesday, the campaign's been hosting women's call nights, Haynes said, and it has a core group of female volunteers who have pledged to reach out to at least 44 other Oregon women to talk about Clinton's candidacy. The number was chosen because the Clinton campaign is hoping she will be the 44th president.

"We believe that when women talk passionately about their issues, it is one of the most powerful tools of persuasion that we have,'' Haynes said.

Obama and Clinton have very similar views on issues that may have special resonance for women, like children's health insurance or No Child Left Behind. So Haynes said the Clintonites are trying to emphasize "the difference between just signing something when it is brought to you, and being an advocate on children's health care, or a woman's right to choose (on abortion).''

The Obama campaign has its own brigade of women, including many who jammed a ballroom at the Benson to hear Katz, former Gov. Barbara Roberts and others praise their candidate to the skies.

"Just any woman is not good enough,'' said Liz Kaufman, a prominent Portland political consultant who is backing Obama and was the master of ceremonies of the event. "We have serious problems, and we need someone who can break through the status quo.''

Women's core issues are often universal topics like health care and education, Kaufman pointed out, but women will consider hot-button topics through a different prism. For example, she said, many of the female Obama supporters frustrated with the war will note that the money spent in Iraq could have gone to local schools.

Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to the Obama campaign, acknowledged that running against Clinton means her team has had to work harder to do women's outreach.

But she said women all over the country are volunteering for Obama, and tens of thousands more are receiving targeted mailing, highlighting work Obama did as a legislator in Illinois on equal pay, and for state-subsidized child care.

The spillover from the Clinton and Obama campaign's efforts to rally female voters in Oregon is bound to affect the down-ballot races too. Pete Brodnitz, a Virginia-based pollster for the Merkley campaign, said the surge of interest - and the approximately 115,000 new Democrats who have registered since January 1 - "changes the dynamic, and there is not that much we can do. We have a limited ability to find the new voters.''

That means, he said, that the campaign will have to rely on traditional methods, like TV, radio and mail, plus supporters, to get out their message. And that's why Merkley's first set of ads was designed to appeal to women, particularly one that featured his wife, Mary, talking about her job as a nurse, and ending with Merkley's promise that he'd take her advice over that of big insurance companies any day.

Jake Weigler, Novick's campaign manager, agreed that "it is hard to calculate who will be turning out, in a unique election like this.''

Novick, he said, has been paying attention to bread-and-butter issues like health care and education, watched especially closely by women, who are often the primary caregivers in their households. The campaign has also honed in on more niche issues, like banning loaded guns in national park, that could appeal to women.

"Our sense is that women are particularly frustrated with the same old usual political rhetoric,'' Weigler said. "They are looking for something different.''

Then there is the question of just how much gender really matters in a Democratic primary.

Susan Shaw, a women's studies professor at Oregon State and an avid Clinton supporter, argues that all else equal, it matters a great deal.

"We have the sense that it is about time, it is our turn,'' she said. "It's not only because she is a woman. It's because she is a smart, qualified and experienced woman, who can offer everything we would want in a president.''

But other Oregon women say gender alone isn't enough.

"For me, it was difficult to think that a woman was running for president and I wouldn't be able to support her in the primary,'' said Samantha Fishman, a substitute teacher from Portland. "But I am completely confident that Obama is the man for the job.''