Soccer moms and NASCAR dads, make room for granny and her friends.
They’re entering the political arena and want candidates to pay attention and heed their concerns.
Their coming-out picnic is today, National Grandparents Day, in Washington, D.C., hosted by the 11 women who knitted together the strands of the movement called GrannyVoter.
Their focus is on the future. Their means are elections. They are not spewing rhetoric and taking sides. They are asking questions. What they want to know is not what a candidate will do for them, but what that candidate will do for their grandchildren.
Ruth Massinga, 64, of Seattle, is a founder and is at the kickoff with her grandkids, Ben, 6, and Madeline, 4.
“We’re very worried about the world they will inherit,” she said Thursday before heading east. “We want to press people running for office to think about the consequences of what they’re proposing.”
The organizers are heavily credentialed gammers with high political acuity.
Massinga is president and chief executive officer of Casey Family Programs, a foundation with $2 billion in assets. Other leaders include Geraldine Ferraro, the 1984 Democratic candidate for vice president, and Pat Schroeder, a former Colorado congresswoman.
These women marched in the 1960s, raised their children, enjoyed successful careers and are still flat out too busy to surrender their driver’s licenses.
But they face the reality that time is running out for them to craft a legacy – or leave a mess – for their grandchildren. It’s become a call to action.
Like most seniors, they vote, making them part of a valuable political commodity. In 2000, 70 percent of people ages 55 to 64 and 72 percent of those 65 to 74 cast ballots.
Candidates behave as if seniors all go to the polls for the same reason. They heed the advice of professional consultants who, after slicing and dicing the electorate into blocs, brand seniors as wanting to hear solely about Social Security and Medicare.
Not so, say GrannyVoter members.
Those are important but not paramount matters for Massinga. She wants to hear how a candidate will improve education, clean up the environment, provide health care, protect civil rights and pursue world peace.
“I think there are more grandparents who have beliefs like us than people think,” Massinga said. “We need to break the stereotypes … so the handlers don’t write us off and say, ‘Throw them a bone.’
“We are more relevant in American society than people act like we are.”
How do they become a targeted voting bloc?
* They draw public attention. Holding a picnic in the nation’s capital is a start.
* They build public interest. They’ve started. In discarding a phone tree for a Web site (www.grannyvoter.org), they hope to build a massive online network for sharing information and resources. And there’s no signup fee.
* And they vote – as if the lives of their grandchildren depend on it.
Reporter Jerry Cornfield’s column on politics runs every Sunday. He can be reached at 360-352-8623 or jcornfield@heraldnet.com.
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