Fifty-year-old Carmen Cortez cleans buildings until 1 a.m. as a janitor in San Francisco and lives with her adult son. Courtney Harrell is a 32-year-old lesbian working in the film industry who rents an apartment with three others. Kathleen Moschel is a 63-year-old Republican and former Hallmark card store owner who lives in the Contra Costa County retirement community of Rossmoor.

Despite those differences, some political operatives and pollsters are herding these women into the same sprawling demographic: unmarried women. The "unmarried" bloc is emerging as this year's trendy political moniker, the granddaughter of the coveted "soccer moms" and "NASCAR dads" micro-targeted by campaigns past.

So what's the reason for wooing unmarried female voters - whom the targeters define as anybody not wearing a ring?

A quarter of all eligible voters - 53 million - are unmarried women, according to an October study by the influential liberal polling firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, but 20 million did not vote in the most recent presidential election.

"They have the power to reshape American politics further, if they vote," according to the Greenberg Quinlan Rosner study. "Unmarried women have the potential to emerge as the 'Democrats' Evangelicals.' "

They're generally younger and have less household income than their married sisters, and they are turned off by the tit-for-tat repartee of political campaigns and the ensuing horse-race media coverage. And for the first time in a presidential race, there are as many unmarried women in America as married.

The key to appealing to them, said Ann Lewis, a senior strategist for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign, is "to tap into their social networks," both online and offline.

What binds unmarrieds of all stripes are economic issues, said Lewis, who prefers the term "single anxious female" because "there's a lot of anxiety about economic issues." While 43 percent of unmarried women have household income of less than $30,000 annually, according to the 2005 American Community Survey, a similar portion of married women earn more than $75,000. More often than unmarried men, unmarried women are taking care of children or are responsible for the health of an older relative.

Pollsters say their research shows that the unmarrieds are in the mood for changing not just who is in office, but how government works.

"These women are leading different lives and they want people to know it," said Page Gardner, founder of Women's Voices, Women's Vote ( www.wvwv.org), a nonpartisan outfit that is targeting 3 million single women. Gardner said the campaign will improve on its 2004 get-out-the-vote effort and already has heard an increased sense of urgency from its audience. "They're really paying attention, and they know what's at stake," she said.

The Clinton campaign - the most financially and organizationally formidable ever launched for a female candidate - is piquing interest among women. About 20 percent of the women polled last month by Lifetime Television, a cable network aimed at women, said they were more likely to vote because Clinton was running.

Despite the attention, unmarrieds say they're not too keen on being the political flavor of the quadrennial. "It offends me when politicians categorize me in some way," said Gloria Crabbe, a 76-year-old retired lawyer who lives in Rossmoor and has been widowed 18 years. "Why do we all have to be soccer moms or unmarrieds?"

"Even this is a scam," Harrell, the film industry worker, said of the minting of the "unmarried" target group. "Instead of trying to figure out how to come after single women, how about trying to figure out how to help me get health care? I don't have health care. Or try to help people to figure out how to buy a house in San Francisco."

Over several days, The Chronicle chatted informally with groups of unmarried women in the Bay Area to identify what is important to them and collect their views on the 2008 presidential race.

Read the original article at San Francisco Gate.