Comment by epanastasi | Hacker News Reader

Comment by epanastasi | Hacker News Reader

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NPR did a great series of pieces on this.

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/03/30/149648666/senat...

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/461/t...

Here's a quote illustrating how much time fundrasing takes away from their normal job...

  Andrea Seabrook
  How many fundraisers do you typically go to in a given week, do you think?
  
  Nancy Pelosi
  A lot. Yeah. Either on the phone or attending events. But I think they've said
  this year I attended almost 400 fundraisers in nearly 40 cities.
  
  Andrea Seabrook
  That's 400 for the year 2011. That's more than one a day, every day of the
  year, Saturdays and Sundays included.

Nancy Pelosi has an incredibly safe seat in a district that would literally sooner die than elect a Republican, and enough power within the Democratic party to turn any challenger from the left into a greasy oil stain. Let me suggest that if she's going to 400 fundraisers per year, it's not because she's forced to at the expense of what she'd rather be doing.

EDIT: And here's in fact the bit right before the part you quoted:

"This is Nancy Pelosi, the top Democrat in the House. She's also the Democratic Party's number one fundraiser. Pelosi has raised hundreds of millions of dollars over the years. Close to $40 million in this election alone."

To wit: she's not representative, she's in fact the very extreme.

Nacy Pelosi isn't attending 400 fundraisers for herself -- she is doing it for the Democratic party and other candidates. Holding a single 'safe' seat in the House is not that important, but electing a few dozen more party members can make a difference, hence the crazy fundraising schedule.

She fund raises for the others to stay in the leadership not to stay in office. Poor questions from NPR.

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