NEW YORK — It is the day after the Grammys, but Rock and Roll Hall of Famer David Crosby is sitting in his Manhattan hotel room concerned about a politician he's never met.
Crosby can't remember her first name. He knows her last name is "Sanchez." But he wants to help the freshman Democratic congresswoman from Orange County who is still fighting an election challenge by the man she defeated last fall, former Republican Rep. Robert K. Dornan.
"Boy, I want very badly for her to make it," says Crosby, who has pledged to perform at a future concert benefiting Rep. Loretta Sanchez. "I don't normally do politicians. Very few."
For many years, Crosby and his musical collaborators--Stephen Stills and Graham Nash, and sometimes Neil Young--have lent their voices to social causes, but rarely to politicians directly.
So why Sanchez, a political unknown until her upset victory over Dornan?
The answer is Tom Campbell, an obscure producer of benefit concerts who has seen much social and political upheaval in his 57 years. Campbell's friends describe him as a Renaissance man who helps bridge musicians' social conscience with the world of politics.
"He's not a producer for profit; he's a producer, for social change," says Donald Miller, Jackson Browne's manager, who has known Campbell for decades. "He's a great priest."
It was through Campbell and his close alliance with Voters for Choice, an abortion rights political action committee founded in 1979 by Gloria Steinem, that some artists heard about Sanchez's effort to take down Dornan.
"Tom watches very carefully and he said [Dornan-Sanchez] was a close race, and everything we could do would be appreciated. So I gave and so did my wife, Susan," Nash says of the combined $2,000 they sent to Sanchez in the waning days of November's campaign.
Browne, Bonnie Raitt and Linda Ronstadt also answered Campbell's low-key plea for donations, which was unbeknownst even to the Sanchez campaign, for a combined $2,500.
Other successful California Democrats benefiting from the Voters for Choice/Campbell alliance last year included Rep. Walter Capps of Santa Barbara, who unseated Rep. Andrea Seastrand (R-Santa Barbara), and Rep. George Brown of San Bernardino, who barely escaped a challenge from Republican Linda Wilde.
An affordably-priced Raitt/Browne concert last year in San Luis Obispo County for Capps, for example, netted about $40,000, and increased his profile in a part of the district that previously had not supported him.
