Obama in big business pocket

[billcoe]

On another thread, I pointed out that Obama is beholden for all that huge haul of campaign funds primarily to big operators. No on believed me, said he has all the little guys giving him pocket change and thats why he's got so much more money than McCain.

 

Not true as it turns out. Here you go Kevbone. From the International Herald Tribune, (NY Times) normally a leftish paper. I don't think the story paints him badly, probably the same could be said of McCain as well. Now who do you want since thats been your core issue all along, ie your incorrect belief that McCain is getting all the money from big donors while Obama gets his from the lil fellas.

 

Link to full artical.

 

" Big donors are the key to Obama's record haul

By Michael M. Luo and Christopher Drew

Published: August 5, 2008

 

In an effort to cast himself as independent of the influence of money on politics, Senator Barack Obama often highlights the campaign contributions of $200 or less that have amounted to fully half of the $340 million he has collected so far.

 

But records show that a third of his record-breaking haul has come from donations of $1,000 or more - a total of $112 million, more than the total of contributions in that category taken in by either Senator John McCain, his Republican rival, or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, his opponent in the Democratic primaries.

 

Behind those large donations is a phalanx of more than 500 Obama "bundlers," fund-raisers who have each collected contributions totaling $50,000 or more. Many of the bundlers come from industries with critical interests in Washington. Nearly three dozen of the bundlers have raised more than $500,000, including more than a half-dozen who have passed the $1 million mark and one or two who have exceeded $2 million, according to interviews with fund-raisers.

 

While his campaign has cited its volume of small donations as a rationale for his decision to opt out of public financing for the general election, Obama has worked to build a network of big-dollar supporters from the time he began contemplating a run for the U.S. Senate.

 

He tapped into well-connected people in Chicago before the 2004 Senate race, and, once elected, set out across the country starting in 2005 to cultivate some of his party's most influential money collectors.

 

 

He courted them with the savvy of a veteran politician, through phone calls, meals and one-on-one meetings; he wrote thank-you cards and remembered birthdays; he sent them autographed copies of his book and doted on their children.

 

The fruit of his efforts has put Obama's major donors on a pace that almost rivals the $147 million that President George W. Bush's Pioneer and Ranger network raised in $1,000-and-larger contributions in 2004 during the primary season.

 

Given his decision not to accept public financing, Obama is counting on his bundlers to help him raise $300 million for his campaign for the general election and another $180 million for the Democratic National Committee.

 

An analysis of campaign finance records shows that about two-thirds of his bundlers are concentrated in four major industries: law, securities and investments, real estate and entertainment. Lawyers make up the largest group at about 130, with many working for firms that also have lobbying arms. At least 100 Obama bundlers are top executives or brokers from investment businesses - nearly two dozen work for financial titans like Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. About 40 others come from the real-estate industry.

 

The biggest fund-raisers include people like Julius Genachowski, a former senior official at the Federal Communications Commission and a technology executive who is new to big-time political fund-raising; Robert Wolf, president and chief operating officer of UBS Investment Bank; James Torrey, a New York hedge fund investor; and Charles Rivkin, an animation studio head in Los Angeles.

 

"It's fairly clear that this is being packaged as an extraordinary new kind of fund-raising, and the Internet is a new and powerful part of it," said Michael Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute. "But it's also clear that many of the old donors are still there and important."

 

The care and feeding of top Obama fund-raisers underscores their significance to his campaign. Members of his National Finance Committee who fulfill their commitment to raise at least $250,000 are being rewarded with trips to the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

 

Finance committee members participate in biweekly conference calls with top campaign officials. The fund-raisers meet quarterly, often with Obama dropping in. He lingered after the meeting last month in Chicago, telling his staff he wanted to thank every person in the room. Some fund-raisers who knocked on doors for Obama in places like Iowa, Pennsylvania and Indiana got to spend time with Obama backstage before and after speeches on primary nights.

 

His fund-raisers invariably say their support for him is not rooted in any kind of promise of access but in their belief in him.

 

"This is about Barack Obama and changing the direction of our country," said Jonathan Perdue, a business consultant in Mill Valley, California, who has raised more than $250,000 for Obama's campaign.

 

Obama has pledged not to accept donations from federally registered lobbyists or political action committees. But some top donors clearly have policy and political agendas. Hedge fund executives, for example, have bundled large sums for Obama at a time their industry has been looking to increase its clout in Washington.

 

Kenneth Griffin, chief executive officer of Citadel Investment Group in Chicago, has collected more than $50,000 for Obama. But Griffin, whose $1.5 billion in income in 2007 made him one of the top hedge fund earners, has given generously over the years to Republicans and recently helped host a fund-raiser for McCain. Citadel has spent more than $1.1 million since 2007 lobbying against higher tax rates for hedge funds. (Obama has supported the higher tax rates.)

 

Similarly, Paul Tudor Jones, a billionaire hedge fund manager from Connecticut, has raised more than $100,000 for Obama. But he also gave to McCain, and two of McCain's Republican rivals in the primary campaign, Rudolph Giuliani and Mitt Romney. Jones, who has given more than $900,000 over the past decade to federal candidates and political organizations, helped form a trade association that has fought hedge fund regulation.

 

Many fund-raisers sit on the campaign's array of policy working groups, getting a chance to weigh in on policy positions and speeches. Genachowski, a Harvard Law School classmate of Obama's, chairs the technology working group. Fund-raisers from private equity and hedge funds sit on Obama's economic policy group.

 

Even as Obama seeks to contrast himself with McCain as a political outsider, updated bundler lists released recently by their campaigns show they have a similar number of high-dollar fund-raisers.

 

Despite Obama's newcomer image, many of his bundlers are Democratic stalwarts, including some of the top fund-raisers for the party's 2004 nominee, Senator John Kerry.

 

 

The Obama fund-raising operation is meticulously organized. Bundlers are assigned tracking numbers, and the finance staff sends them quarterly reminders of how they are doing in meeting their goals.

 

"There's no price for admission," said Alan Solomont, a top Democratic fund-raiser in Boston who earned his fortune in the nursing home industry and has given more than $1.5 million to Democratic candidates and causes. "We value every donation and every donor equally, but we are a performance-based organization. We want everybody to feel like they're included, but at the same time we're not here to have tea together."

 

Obama began courting many of his fund-raisers soon after he burst upon the national scene with his rousing speech at the 2004 Democratic national convention.

 

Solomont, a major fund-raiser for both Kerry and Bill Clinton during their presidential runs, got a call on his cellphone in February 2005, a year after Obama's election to the Senate, from a member of his staff who asked whether he would like to get together with Obama.

 

They met for Chinese food in Washington the following week, and Obama scored points with Solomont when he pointed out they were both community organizers earlier in their careers.

 

"I've been involved in politics a long time," Solomont said. "Nobody's bothered to know that about me."

 

Early the same year, Obama attended a dinner in the San Francisco Bay area of about 20 major Kerry supporters that was organized by Mark Gorenberg, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who was Kerry's single biggest fund-raiser, after an inquiry from Obama's staff. Several on hand, including Gorenberg and John Roos, head of a Silicon Valley law firm, became among the earliest and biggest check collectors for Obama's presidential bid.

 

In 2006, Obama became a vice chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, giving him the opportunity to campaign across the country and cultivate other potential benefactors.

 

When his book, "The Audacity of Hope," came out later that year, his staff organized book parties at the homes of major Democratic donors.

 

In December, Obama visited the New York office of the billionaire George Soros to court a roomful of high-powered Democratic fund-raisers, hoping to lure some of them away from Hillary Clinton. Not everyone was swayed, but Obama won over Orin Kramer, a hedge fund executive from New Jersey, and Wolf, the UBS executive, both of whom are now among Obama's biggest fund-raisers.

 

Obama landed as his finance director, Julianna Smoot, who had headed fund-raising for Senate Democrats and previously for Senator Tom Daschle when he was majority leader.

 

Guided by Smoot, a key part of the campaign's fast start was its success in scooping up top Kerry fund-raisers, including Lou Susman, a Chicago investment banker who was Kerry's national finance chairman, and Kirk Wagar, a Miami lawyer who became Obama's Florida finance chairman.

 

Nevertheless, the campaign's initial meeting of its National Finance Committee was a relatively small affair - about 75 people in Chicago, the day after Obama officially announced his candidacy.

 

Penny Pritzker, the billionaire heiress to the Hyatt hotel fortune, whom Obama asked to become his finance chairwoman, challenged the group to double in size.

 

The number of bundlers ballooned quickly. The Obama campaign made important inroads among an affluent class under age 45, including Silicon Valley engineers and hedge fund analysts, many of whom had not been on the political radar screen.

 

Donations in June, the latest month for which he has disclosed his donors to the Federal Election Commission, illustrate the double-barreled nature of the campaign's fund-raising. Obama brought in nearly $31 million in contributions of less than $200, his best month for small donations. But he also collected more than $12 million in contributions of $1,000 or more, the most since the first half of 2007.

 

The share from large contributions appears poised to increase as Obama has stepped up his fund-raising schedule, rushing from one glitzy event to another.

 

"In 2007, the campaign relied on the tried-and-true-methods like fund-raisers, for both large and small-dollar donors, with the candidate or his surrogates, and the Internet largely financed it in 2008," said Kirk Dornbush, the head of a bio-tech firm and a top fund-raiser in Atlanta. "When you combine the traditional fund-raising methods with the continued online contributions, you have a very, very powerful fund-raising engine.""

 

 

[Hugh Conway]

Did you hear about the woman who drives a 1993 Chevy who donated $60k to McCain as payback for offshore drilling?

[kevbone]

When is the lobbiests going to be removed from WA?

[billcoe]

Did you hear about the woman who drives a 1993 Chevy who donated $60k to McCain as payback for offshore drilling?

 

No, but whats the punchline Hugh?

 

 

Kev, Madrone meeting tonight. 6-8pm.

[Dechristo]

When is the lobbiests going to be removed from WA?

 

WTF? You've got to be one of the lobbiest people in WA.

[canyondweller]

When is the lobbiests going to be removed from WA?

 

It's the First Amendment in action, baby!!!

[Greta]

Ill be the first to admit that I know very little of campaign financing, but doesnt having 2/3 of your total contributions being from <$1000/person donations mean that a significant portion of your funds are from "small" donors? What is a reasonable ratio? Aren't "bundlers" just people collecting smaller donations from more people? When the funds are submitted in a bundle, are those submitting these larger bundles of funds being counted as "large" donors, and thus skewing the figures?

[General Zod]

[Greta]

Whatever, dipshit

[KaskadskyjKozak]

Lick sack, Zod.

[Dechristo]

Is your current hairstyle borrowed from Ronald Reagan or Conan O'Brien?

[Greta]

 

So. If you're supposed to be some badass, why are you, like, named after a sheet of grass, man?

[pink]

Ill be the first to admit that I know very little

 

 

 

[General Zod]

Is your current hairstyle borrowed from Ronald Reagan or Conan O'Brien?

 

Don't knock it till you've tried it.

[Dechristo]

When I try it, I'll be knockin' your world, big girl.

[ZimZam]

 

Don't make me kick your ass again.