PROVINCETOWN — An air of excitement hovered over the West End last Friday afternoon. Herring Cove beachgoers cycled past black SUVs and suited men with earpieces and sunglasses. Further down Commercial Street, well-dressed couples and families in floral prints and summer pastels filed into the spacious lawn of a stylish bayside home. The First Lady was in town.
Jill Biden came to raise money for the Biden Victory Fund at the home of Bryan Rafanelli and Mark Walsh. Her visit kicked off a busy season of political fundraising, as the Outer Cape’s high-dollar donors gear up for the upcoming election cycle.
Rafanelli, who recently planned the White House wedding of the Bidens’ granddaughter Naomi, and Walsh, a banker and Obama administration alum, were the primary hosts of the event alongside LGBTQ activist and former Provincetown Banner publisher Alix Ritchie and her spouse, Marty Davis. Together, Ritchie and Rafanelli serve as the unofficial leaders of a network of wealthy Outer Cape donors who have made Provincetown a lucrative destination for national political candidates.
“Provincetown has a particularly well-established network of gay donors,” said Chet Atkins, a former Mass. Congressman. “You drop your line in the water where you think the fish are.”
Over the past decade, a slew of big names have trekked to the edge of the world to tap into this network. Joe Biden, when he was vice president, appeared at the Pilgrim Monument at Rafanelli’s urging during the 2012 Obama reelection campaign. Hillary Clinton — whose daughter, Chelsea, had Rafanelli plan her wedding — appeared twice, in 2015 and 2016. And in 2019, the two hosted presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg at Rafanelli’s house following a packed event in Provincetown Town Hall.
“It’s typically not a lot of people who are willing” to develop a political fundraising network, said Alan Solomont, a major Democratic Party donor and former dean of the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University, who has a house in Truro. “If I were looking to participate in a political event out in Provincetown, I’d probably call Bryan and Mark,” he added.
And they have indeed been successful: the Buttigieg fundraiser raked in around $325,000, setting a record at the time for the South Bend, Ind. mayor’s campaign. Friday’s event exceeded its goal of raising $250,000, Rafanelli said. A Biden campaign official declined to say exactly how much the event raised but said it was one of the most successful headlined by the First Lady this year.
Ritchie and Rafanelli are also major donors in their own right, particularly Ritchie, who in the 2021-2022 cycle donated over $650,000 to Democratic candidates and causes, according to publicly available campaign finance data. In that same cycle, residents of the four Outer Cape towns — not including Ritchie, who made donations using addresses in Florida, New Jersey, and Illinois — gave a total of about $1,050,000, about 90 percent of which went to Democrats.
State Sen. Julian Cyr, who represents the Cape and Islands and helped raise money for the Biden event, attributed Provincetown’s significance on the national stage to an increased LGBTQ presence in the Democratic Party.
“In the last 10 or 15 years, as the Democratic Party has embraced the LGBTQ equity movement and its causes, donors have responded in kind with a loyalty that’s unmatched,” Cyr said. “As a cohort among all the affinity groups, they are among the most important and the most consistent donors to the Democratic Party across the country.”
Because a majority of donors in this network are, according to Rafanelli, themselves queer, Provincetown has emerged as a destination for candidates to show their bona fides on queer political issues. During her remarks Friday, Biden rattled off a list of her husband’s accomplishments: signing the Respect for Marriage Act, permitting transgender military service members, battling conversion therapy. “His wins are your wins,” she told the crowd.
This summer will also see fundraising stops in Provincetown from Mass. Gov. Maura Healey and Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin — both prominent lesbian politicians — as well as Mass. Rep. Katherine Clark, whom Rafanelli described as a committed ally.
Rafanelli said it was “paramount” that candidates coming to Provincetown engage directly with the LGBTQ community, saying he looks for candidates who prove “that they understand our fight for equality and diversity and inclusion. That’s critical in getting our attention and getting us to participate.”
Ritchie cautioned that Provincetown is far from a single-issue community. Nonetheless, she observed that candidates who come here tend to gravitate toward discussing LGBTQ rights. She said donors in her network are most concerned about women’s rights in a post-Roe world and the “repressive” positions of the Republican Party, adding that LGBTQ issues “could be a bigger deal than anybody would have predicted a couple years ago” — particularly if Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has made opposition to LGBTQ rights a top campaign theme, sees his support grow.
Ritchie said she hopes access to abortion emerges as a defining issue as the election cycle progresses. “There is a move to just ban abortion nationally and a move among the Trump people and the DeSantis people and the GOP in general to devalue women and roll the clock back pre-1950s,” she said. “We have to fight back.”
Cyr said he felt a focus on LGBTQ rights will motivate donors and voters in Provincetown. “A Trump administration or another extremist administration would mean an unfettered rollback and attack on our community, especially the most vulnerable people in our community,” he said.
“In such a toxic political moment, LGBTQ people understand, more than most anyone else in this country, what’s at stake here,” Cyr said. “That’s why, I think, you see us voting with our feet and also with our dollars.”
SIDEBAR: FIRST LADY RALLIES DEMOCRATS AT FUNDRAISER
By Elias Schisgall
PROVINCETOWN — About 300 people gathered at the West End home of Bryan Rafanelli and Mark Walsh to hear First Lady Jill Biden last Friday.
Biden, who wore a white, gold, and blue ensemble, largely focused her remarks on LGBTQ issues. She talked about the White House’s Pride event in June on the South Lawn, which featured Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten, as well as attending Pride events in Tennessee and Minnesota.
“They couldn’t have been more different,” Biden said to laughter.
“The energy was there,” Biden added. “There was joy and electricity, made fragile by the looming work that we knew was on the other side of that celebration.”
Biden touted her husband’s legislative accomplishments, including the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. She also stressed the president’s work promoting LGBTQ rights.
“I hope you’re proud because you made that possible,” she told the crowd, many of whom were members of Provincetown’s queer community. “Yes, there are challenges ahead. We already know what’s in store if these MAGA Republicans win,” Biden said, eliciting a chorus of boos. “The safety of LGBTQ Americans even more at risk, U.S. policy being dictated by late-night tweets, a constant assault on our most sacred institutions, our democracy, and our freedoms.”
She assured the crowd that “we aren’t going to let that happen because we’re in this together,” to sustained applause. “Because we have the optimism and the drive and passion to write a different story. And most of all, we have the candidate who is ready to finish the job: my husband, Joe Biden.”
Biden praised Rafanelli, who recently planned the White House wedding of the Bidens’ granddaughter Naomi. She said the event was “stunning” and “magnificent.”
Attendees who spoke to the Independent following the event said they were excited to get behind the reelection effort. “I’m just jazzed up about supporting Biden,” said Candace Nagle of Truro.
“We have to agree that democracy and our rights are on the line,” said Scott Penn, a Cape Cod native who now lives in Brooklyn, N.Y. “Anything we can do to support her and her husband’s reelection effort, we want to do.”
Bettina Rosarius, who runs the Gaa Gallery in Provincetown, said she was “astonished at how good” Biden’s remarks were.
“I thought it was incredible that she’s coming here, to such a small place, but one of the most gorgeous places and so important for the LGBTQ community,” Rosarius said.
Clara, her daughter, echoed that sentiment, saying LGBTQ issues will play a significant role in the election. “Especially because there’s so many queer people here, I definitely think it’s important for candidates to show up” and engage with the community, she said. —Elias Schisgall
