Meet London Democrats who are lobbying the capital ahead of the US election

With glittering social events taking place across the capital, and the city’s wealthiest Americans getting out their cheque books, could the London Democrats swing the vote? Charlotte Edwardes reports
Elizabeth Pierson Sainty
Charlotte Edwardes11 August 2016

The cars — long, black, unmistakably American, driven by chauffeurs, windows smoked — began to arrive just before 8pm. ‘The security was unbelievable,’ says Tom Ford’s former right-hand woman, Whitney Bromberg Hawkings, who saw the unfolding scene — like something from The West Wing — in South Kensington. Caterers, party organisers, people with clipboards, chairs and poles for a marquee had all disappeared into the mouth of one house. ‘And then I was like “Oh yeah, it’s Natalie Massenet’s dinner for Hillary Clinton tonight”.’

Not just any dinner, of course. This was a major event in honour of Hillary, a huge signal that the Americans of London were staunchly behind her presidential bid and — as importantly — were prepared to put their credit cards down to prove it. Tickets were £2,000 a head.

Among those attending the dinner at Net-a-Porter founder Massenet’s 19th-century mansion, minutes from the Lycée Français Charles de Gaulle, were co-host Anna Wintour, editor-in-chief of American Vogue, fashion designer Tom Ford, and British Vogue contributing editor Calgary Avansino, to name but a few.

Hillary has no shortage of support among well-known Americans. Those who have pledged their support in the States include Lena Dunham, creator of Girls, comedians Chris Rock and Ellen DeGeneres, actors Jane Fonda and Julia Roberts, George Clooney and his wife, Amal, rapper Snoop Dogg, and Chloë Moretz, the 19-year-old actor girlfriend of Brooklyn Beckham, who has been trying to woo young Instagramming voters to the cause. Marc Jacobs even designed a T-shirt with Hillary’s face on it, and Anna Wintour even wore it.

In London, Massenet is part of a growing army of London-based American Democrats banging the drum for Hillary. Her dinner — though attention-grabbing for all its glitz — was just one of many hundreds of fundraising dinners, awareness events, talks and cocktails going on in London over the past months.

They are crucial: an estimated five to six million Americans live abroad; 70-odd per cent of them are Democrats. The Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford says: ‘The UK has the largest US expat population outside North America.’ These are the targets for Democrat activists in London. To illustrate how ‘decisive’ expat voters are in US elections, the Institute cites the year 2000 presidential elections — the closest election in modern times — in which delayed overseas votes effectively delivered victory for George W. Bush against Al Gore.

‘The consequences of a Trump victory are so disastrous for America and the world, that everyone has to play their part, even those living abroad in places like London,’ says James P. Rubin, former Assistant Secretary of State under President Bill Clinton, who lives in the capital with his wife, the foreign correspondent Christiane Amanpour.

London, traditionally, has been a ‘huge contributor’ to Democratic coffers, according to Mark Bergman, a key London activist who fundraised for both Obama campaigns, before throwing his weight behind Hillary. While some events host Hillary in person, most have what are known as her ‘surrogates’ — people closely related to either the Clinton White House or Hillary’s time as Secretary of State. The politician and diplomat Madeleine Albright, who under Bill Clinton was the first woman to be Secretary of State, has been in London a few times in the past few months, as have Joel Benenson, Hillary’s chief pollster, and Jake Sullivan who is her senior foreign policy adviser.

Hillary Clinton with her daughter, Chelsea
Rex

In February, Chelsea Clinton came to speak at a fundraiser hosted by Elizabeth Sainty, gallerist and co-owner of the Stair Sainty Gallery on Dover Street. Her co-hosts that evening were Anna Wintour and Massenet.

When I meet Sainty at her gallery, she tells me how she was first pressed to join the campaign by her friend Amy L. Bondurant, former ambassador to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. ‘No one is too grand for this,’ she says. ‘Everyone is pulling out all the stops. Everyone has something to offer, whether it’s writing something, giving time, canvassing, making phone calls. Tapping whoever they know.’ She describes this as a campaign ‘like no other. Many of us, more than ever have become energised.

‘Americans abroad tend to be more open-minded and therefore more likely to be Democrats, but we get a lot of stick from the general public,’ says Sainty, who is originally from Oklahoma but grew up in Washington DC. ‘One problem is that Americans at home feel that Americans abroad are filthy stinking rich, hiding money away in Swiss bank accounts. So the divide between that and the reality, which is that there are really normal Americans living here, is huge.’ The paranoia is enough, however, that Sainty and many of her co-fundraisers are reluctant to put a figure on the amount they raise.

Anna Wintour showing her support for the Democratic cause
Rex

Between 150 and 170 people attended her event, sitting on long tables that ran the length of the gallery. With tongue-in-cheek patriotism, they served mini hamburgers, hot dogs and beer and decorated the space in red, white and blue flower arrangements. Her gallery is a cathedral to good taste, from moulded ceilings to marble skirting and, Sainty tells me, ‘London’s only painting by Goya’.

While proud of her roots (Sainty’s father was DeVier Pierson, special counsel to former US President Lyndon B. Johnson — ‘There’s a cute picture of me sitting on his lap as a child’), she’s also fairly anglicised after marrying Guy Stair Sainty, a Westminster-educated British author and dealer in Old Masters. Her son is at Eton and they keep a flat in Paris.

In her office, there’s a photograph of Sainty with Hillary, and they are not unalike. Sainty has the blonde power hair, a razor-sharp trouser suit and the sort of bold jewellery that Hillary would definitely approve of.

‘Chelsea Clinton went to Sidwell Friends, the same school as me, although some years after, and the school nurse tells an anecdote about when Chelsea was there and her father was President,’ says Sainty. (Sidwell Friends School is a highly academic private school in Washington, popular with the offspring of politicians — Barack Obama’s two daughters go there, as did Richard Nixon’s, as well as the sons of Theodore Roosevelt and Al Gore.)

‘Chelsea got sick one day and went to the nurse’s office to ask if she could go home. The nurse said: “OK, sweetheart, I’ll call your mother.” Chelsea said: “No, no. You better call my father. My mother is so busy.”’

Larry Gagosian, New York art dealer, launches fundraising group Artists for Hillary next month and already has Jeff Koons supporting the cause. ‘I am very interested to get it running here,’ says Sainty. ‘There’s a fundraising element to it. All campaigns need money and no one should judge.’

Originally from Washington, Mark Bergman works in London as a partner of Paul Weiss, a City law firm, and recently launched Lawyers for Hillary. He agrees with Sainty on the importance of fundraising. ‘It’s crucial because the sad fact is that campaigns need money, and the campaign need people to raise it,’ he says.

Bergman has long hosted fundraising dinners at his swish house in Notting Hill. There are rules. There is a $1,000 (£760) ceiling on the amount spent on food and drinks in private house events under fundraising rules, and ‘only Americans can contribute to campaigns’. Another restriction — called the Hatch Pact — prevents serving members of government from fundraising, which means, staff at the American Embassy have to be neutral, even if their political affiliations are known.

For example, it’s no secret that Matthew Barzun, the outgoing American Ambassador to the UK and chief fundraiser for Obama, and his wife are friends with Massenet and have hosted a dinner at the US Embassy, Winfield House in Regent’s Park, in her honour.

Bergman says: ‘One of the great things about London is that we have people from all over the United States. The election will turn on six or seven key states, and so to have people in London who are from Ohio or North Carolina is really useful, especially as the race is so close.’

At the time of going to press, a poll for CNN showed Hillary had a nine-point lead, but up to then it had been neck and neck, and the London Democrats don’t want to take any chances.

Those putting their shoulder behind the campaign are tiered. While Massenet, Sainty, Bergman — and others, including New Yorker Ruth Rogers of the River Café — are actively organising events, there is also an army of ‘mobilisers’, those who tap their networks in order to galvanise their support.

‘The idea,’ says Bergman, ‘is that if you can motivate 100 people, each one motivates more and the whole thing keeps multiplying.’

Whitney Bromberg Hawkings 

Their networks are impressive. Texan-born Whitney Bromberg Hawkings was Tom Ford’s senior vice president of communications and now runs the FlowerBX florists (‘I should start Florists for Hillary’). Her husband is English and she’s lived in London for 15 years.

The Voguette and clean eating guru Calgary Avansino, originally from America’s West Coast, is another mobiliser, who got involved ‘because I believe in Hillary’s skills, her experience, her intellect and her determined spirit’. She adds: ‘I attend fundraising events whenever I can in London and encourage others to attend and give too — it unfortunately takes a lot of money to run an effective election. But the most important thing any of us can do is spread the word, discuss the issues, and remind and encourage anyone and everyone of age to vote.’

Calgary Avansino with Chelsea Clinton 

Other mobilisers include the Californian-born but London-based uberstylist and fashion editor Kim Hersov, whose partner is London artist Barry Reigate. ‘I have not donated large amounts to Hillary’s campaign,’ she says, ‘but I am certainly vocal in my support.’

If you are a US citizen abroad you must request an absentee ballot — think of it as a UK postal vote — via the Federal Voting Assistance Program. This can be returned via fax or email, and dates vary for each state — but largely it has to arrive by the first week of November.

London Democrat ‘mobiliser’ Kim Hersov

‘I’ve made sure I will not miss that postal ballot,’ says Bromberg Hawkings. ‘A lot of Americans living in London are going to exercise that vote for the first time. In the past they’ve said: “Oh it doesn’t really matter.” But this time the stakes are too high.’

And as the time between now and the voting deadline fast approaches, so the efforts of the London Democrats are redoubled.

After all, it’s the alternative to Hillary Clinton that the London Democrats so dread. As Avansino says: ‘I think people feel very passionate about their vote this November because they can’t imagine a Trump future becoming a reality. That thought galvanises people.’

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