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Here's another entry in the strange bedfellows political show, 2014 edition: As Election Day gets closer, some Republicans in battleground races seem to be moving to the center on a number of issues. Their latest sea change is the minimum wage.

Alongside pay equity, infrastructure investment and college affordability, raising the minimum wage is at the center of the Democrats' election year economic agenda. President Obama has given numerous speeches on the minimum wage, excoriating Republicans in Congress for blocking a federal minimum wage hike. "Either you're in favor of raising wages for hardworking Americans, or you're not," he said in April.

He makes it sound so simple — but this is politics.

As free-market conservatives, Republicans are philosophically opposed to raising the minimum wage. But a handful of Republican candidates in tight races have come out in favor of raising the minimum wage on the state level.

Bruce Rauner, running for governor of Illinois, has said in the past that he believed the minimum wage could be lowered, or even eliminated. But now, Rauner says, if Illinois passed tort reform and tax reform, he would support raising the state wage. He's also come out in favor of raising the federal minimum wage.

Why the change? Illinois is one of five states this year that has a minimum wage hike on the state ballot. These propositions are hugely popular and usually pass with 60 or even 70 percent of the vote.

In Arkansas and Alaska, where there are also minimum wage referendums on the ballot, Republican Senate candidates Tom Cotton and Dan Sullivan say they'll vote for them. In Sullivan's case, he was previously opposed to the ballot proposition, but then, his spokesman said, "he had a chance to read the initiative."

Democrats are crying foul. They were hoping to use the referendums to get more of their supporters to the polls. If there's no difference between the Republican and Democratic candidates on this issue, that might be harder.

Ted Strickland, the populist former governor of Ohio, says these Republicans have had a foxhole conversion. "Most people understand that when someone embraces a policy they have previously rejected, and they do it just a short time before an election," says Strickland, "they are acting out of political expediency rather than out of convictions and courage."

Republican strategist Sarah Fagen says that in this case what Republicans consider to be good policy — letting the free market work — is not good politics. Republicans would rather avoid the debate over the minimum wage altogether and focus on other issues, she says, so they've made a kind of tactical retreat.

Remaining opposed to a federal wage hike but supporting a state hike allows them, says Fagen, to be true to "their economic philosophy but still be reasonable to voters who are demanding that the minimum wage be increased."

Republicans are choosing their battles more carefully this year. They're moving to the center on issues like contraception or the minimum wage, and that's caused some fancy political footwork on both sides. In some states, Republican legislators voted to raise the state wage in order to avoid having the issue on the ballot. But in Alaska, Democrats in the Legislature blocked a bill so that the issue would be on the ballot this fall.

And that raises the obvious question: Can these ballot propositions actually help Democratic candidates?

Progressive activist Brad Woodhouse says yes, up to a point. Using the minimum wage ballot referendums as bait, Democrats can target drop-off voters who might only come out and vote because they think it's in their economic interest.

"You hope that if they come out to increase the minimum wage," says Woodhouse, "that they'll vote for the Democrat."

Ballot initiatives can boost turnout — by about 1 percent. That, theoretically, could help Democrats win an otherwise close race.

But academics who study ballot referendums say no minimum wage initiative has ever determined the outcome of a state race. John Matsusaka, director of the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the University of Southern California, points out that there are many examples of Republican candidates winning statewide even as minimum wage ballot referendums also passed 2 to 1.

"The Democrats might get a bump from this," says Matsusaka. "But the people who look closely at these data have a hard time finding that it makes a big difference."

So the bottom line is that these initiatives are very good for people who want to raise the minimum wage, but they're less useful as a political tool for Democrats looking for help in a Republican-leaning political landscape.

This story is part of the New Boom series on millennials in America.

Millennials are spending — and giving away their cash — a lot differently than previous generations, and that's changing the game for giving, and for the charities that depend on it.

Scott Harrison's group, Charity: Water, is a prime example. Harrison's story starts in New York's hottest nightclubs, promoting the proverbial "models and bottles."

"At 28 years old, I realized my legacy was going to be just that. Here lies a guy who got people wasted," Harrison says.

So he changed his story. Harrison volunteered to spend the next two years in West Africa. What he found when he first got to Liberia was a drinking water crisis. He watched 7-year-olds drink regularly from chocolate-colored swamps — water, he says, that he wouldn't let his dog drink.

Most childhood diseases in the developing countries he visited could be traced to unsafe drinking water, so everything changed for Harrison. He got inspired to start raising money for clean water when he returned to the states, but his friends were wary.

"They all said, 'I don't trust charities. I don't give. I believe these charities are just these black holes. I don't even know how much money would actually go to the people who I'm trying to help,' " Harrison recalls.

So his one cause became two: He started Charity: Water to dig wells to bring clean drinking water to the nearly 800 million people without access to it around the globe. But he also wanted to set an example with the way the organization did its work.

"We're also really trying to reinvent charity, reinvent the way people think about giving, the way that they give," he says.

“ That sense of 'I need to give out of obligation' — I don't know that it's going to be around 20 years from now.

- Amy Webb

Demographic change is a huge reason for rethinking this. With around 80 million millennials coming of age, knowing how they spend their cash on causes is going to be critical for nonprofits. And their spending patterns aren't the same as their parents.

"Our culture is changing pretty dramatically," says Amy Webb, who forecasts digital trends for nonprofit and for-profit companies. "That sense of 'I need to give out of obligation' — I don't know that it's going to be around 20 years from now."

One piece of advice she gives on appealing to younger donors? Don't even ask them to "donate," because younger donors want to feel more invested in a cause. Choose a different word, with a different connotation: investment.

"It may seem something simple. It's just semantics: donation vs. investment. But I think to a millennial, who's grown up in a very different world, one that's more participatory because of the digital tools that we have, to them they want to feel like they're making an investment. Not just that they're investing their capital, but they're investing emotionally," Webb says.

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The Manhattan-based headquarters of Charity: Water. Elise Hu/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Elise Hu/NPR

The Manhattan-based headquarters of Charity: Water.

Elise Hu/NPR

And there's the tech part. She says any philanthropy without a smart digital platform — not just for donations but for empowering a community of givers — will be left behind.

Which brings us back to Charity: Water. Designers spend most their time finding ways to save their donors time, trimming as much lag time or obstacles to giving online as possible.

"There are a lot of people who are more willing to be generous with 20, 30 and 50 dollars, but their time is actually worth something. And the thought of pulling out their credit card and fighting through a two- and three- and four-page form is just too much," Harrison says.

On its site, giving is as simple as a couple of clicks. And Charity: Water's big tactical success, the approach for which it's earned notoriety, is getting young people to call on their own real-life social networks for help. It's the same approach that made this summer's Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS so unavoidable.

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"We're always taking selfies, we're sharing details about our lives. So why not do a little social narcissism for a good cause," Beth Kanter, author of Measuring the Networked Nonprofit, told NPR in August.

Charity: Water stokes that by building campaigns around birthdays.

"One of the big ideas that the millennials embraced," Harrison says, "is this idea that we sorta stumbled into, when we asked people to give up their birthday for clean water. So I went around asking everyone I knew to give $32 for my 32nd birthday."

Soon, tech CEOs were raising tens of thousands of dollars per campaign by giving up their birthdays for water. This spring, NFL safety Kam Chancellor joined in. And the generation that comes after millennials — the children today — are getting into it, too.

"We had 7-year-olds in Austin, Texas, go door to door asking for $7 donations. We had 16-year-olds in Indiana asking for $16 donations," Harrison says.

The group's focus on social networks and simple design means 4 million more people, in 22 countries, now have access to clean drinking water.

But you don't have to take our word for it. Charity: Water's latest tech improvement is putting remote sensors on wells — so donors can see just how much water flows from what they helped build.

"We think this is just going to be game changing," Harrison says.

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For about a month, Kmart says, its stores' checkout registers were "compromised by malicious software that stole customer credit and debit card information."

The company, owned by Sears, says it removed the malware from its system after it was discovered Thursday. It announced the exposure late Friday, saying that no personal data or PIN numbers were lost.

While some important customer information seems to have been protected, the breach could still allow criminals to make counterfeit versions of the exposed credit cards.

The company announced the problem on its website, along with recommendations that "If customers see any sign of suspicious activity, they should immediately contact their card issuer." The company also says customers can get more information at its website and over the phone at 888-488-5978.

The number of customers in question hasn't been announced; the vulnerability did not affect online shoppers, the company says.

Saying the breach likely began in early September, Sears announced that to protect anyone "who shopped with a credit or debit card in our Kmart stores during the month of September through yesterday (Oct. 9, 2014), Kmart will be offering free credit monitoring protection."

The data breach affected only "track 2" data, reports security expert Brian Krebs, citing a Sears spokesman who says the information "did not include customer names, email address, physical address, Social Security numbers, PINs or any other sensitive information."

With Friday's announcement, the retailer joins Target, Neiman Marcus and Home Depot on the list of large companies whose customers' data was accessed illegally in the past year.

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As times got tough in the recent recession, the less well-off of America's citizens became more generous when giving to charity. But at the same time, wealthy Americans cut the proportion of their incomes they donated, according to a new study that analyzed data from tax returns.

NPR's Pam Fessler reports for our Newscast unit:

"The study was done by the Chronicle of Philanthropy, which looked at IRS data showing charitable deductions in 2006 and 2012. The study found that Americans who earned $200,000 a year or more cut the share of income they gave to charity by 4.6 percent, while Americans earning less than $100,000 a year gave 4.5 percent more of their income to charity.

"Those with incomes of $25,000 or less saw the biggest increase. The share of their income that went to charity rose almost 17 percent. Low-income Americans primarily give to religious organizations."

While the wealthiest Americans cut how much of their incomes they sent to charity, the total amount of their donations rose, with the Chronicle saying their donations "increased by $4.6 billion, to hit $77.5 billion in 2012, using inflation-adjusted dollars."

For the study, researchers used data about gifts to charity from taxpayers who itemized deductions, compiled by the organization Giving USA. They based their observations on donors' adjusted gross income, not their net worth.

To put the numbers in a wider perspective, consider that in 2012, individual Americans donated $228.93 billion to charity, or 72 percent of the total, according to the National Center for Charitable Statistics.

Beyond income levels, the Chronicle's study also highlights geographical differences in giving. For starters, Las Vegas, where the recession was sharply felt, surpassed its reputation as Sin City to show the largest increase in giving, with people shelling out nearly 15 percent more of their income for charity between 2006 and 2012.

The city's generosity helped make Nevada the state whose residents boosted the rate of their giving the most during the recession. Here's the top five:

Nevada
Idaho
Georgia
Connecticut
Florida

"Residents of Utah remain by far the nation's most generous," the Chronicle reports. "For every $1,000 they earned, they donated $65.60 to charity. New Hampshire remains the least generous. Those residents gave $17.40 for every $1,000 they earned."

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