Obama Looks to Recruit Clinton’s Top Fundraisers
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and LESLIE WAYNE
nytimes.com
( Both of them have individually raised more than McSame. I wonder if our wingnuts HERE are giving to McSame? I've already given to Obama, and will again. )
As Senator Barack Obama edges closer to the Democratic presidential nomination, his campaign is gearing up to recruit many of Senator Hillary Clinton’s top fundraisers, a move that could provide him with a huge infusion of cash if he wins the party’s nod and the two camps can get past the rancor of the primary season.
Several of Mr. Obama’s finance officials say that if Mrs. Clinton drops out of the race, they will invite her top fundraisers to join Mr. Obama’s national finance committee at a meeting in Chicago on June 19. They estimate that the well-connected Clinton team could raise at least $50 million to $75 million for Mr. Obama and even more for the Democratic Party, adding a giant boost to the record-shattering amounts he is receiving from small donors over the Internet.
So far, the contact between the two sides has been limited to informal talks among fundraisers in major cities, and Mr. Obama’s advisers stressed that they would not take any steps to court Mrs. Clinton’s fundraisers as long as she remains in the race. And many of Mrs. Clinton’s top finance officials said they are sticking with her as long as she officially remains in the race.
But top fundraisers in both camps say they have always expected to coalesce behind the nominee. And Mr. Obama’s advisers say that strong support from the Clinton fundraising machine could be important their campaign if, as is widely expected, he were to opt out of the public financing system in the general election against Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.
Mr. Obama has already raised three times as much money as Mr. McCain. And the combination of his Internet appeals and the Clinton donors could lift his fundraising total to an eye-popping $400 million to $500 million, practically ensuring that the Democrats could outspend the Republicans in the Nov. 4 election and mount larger advertising and get-out-the-vote drives than ever before.
Still, there are sharp differences in how the Obama and Clinton fundraising teams have operated, and people on both sides say it could be harder than in past Democratic campaigns for them to pull together. Campaign-finance experts caution that an influx of high-rolling donors from the Clinton camp could carry some political risks for Mr. Obama, particularly if some of the contributions seemed at odds with his promise to reduce the role of special interests in politics.
Hassan Nemazee, a national finance co-chairman for the Clinton campaign, said that if Mr. Obama were to win the nomination, most of Mrs. Clinton’s top 300 to 400 fundraisers would support him. But Mr. Nemazee said that the amount of money they could bring in would depend on how deeply the Obama campaign integrated the two operations, the kind of fundraising events held and even whether Mrs. Clinton ended up on the ticket as the vice-presidential candidate.
“It would be important how much Senator Obama and his top advisers in Chicago reached out to us, and how welcome our people felt,” Mr. Nemazee said.
Campaign-finance experts said that enlisting the Clinton donor network could blur Mr. Obama’s image as a different kind of politician — and alienate some of his core supporters — if he began taking large sums from corporate executives in industries like financial services and energy that he has criticized on the campaign trail.
“His victories were because of his ability to use the Internet to get cadres of people to give small donations and to volunteer for him,” said Michael J. Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute, a non-profit group in Washington. “If he were to suddenly look like Hillary Clinton in the early months, where he would go only after high-dollar donors, it could turn off people ringing doorbells for him.”
Anthony J. Corrado Jr., a campaign-finance expert at Colby College in Maine, added that Mr. Obama might not need to take that risk, given the power of his Internet fundraising juggernaut.
Records show that more than 1.5 million people have donated to Mr. Obama’s primary campaign, and he has raised $121 million, or 47 percent of his total of $256 million in donations, from individuals in amounts of $200 or less.
“That’s what’s been driving his fund-raising,” Mr. Corrado said, “and it has been scaled up to the point that if all the existing Obama donors give $100, and about a third of the Clinton donors do the same, he can have a couple hundred million dollars more.”
Mr. Obama’s campaign officials declined to talk publicly about the plans to reach out to the Clinton fundraisers, saying they did not want to seem disrespectful to Mrs. Clinton.
Ben LaBolt, a spokesman for Mr. Obama, said in a statement that the campaign was “confident that after a nominees is selected, the Democratic Party will unite at every level.” Mr. LaBolt also said the campaign would continue to emphasize grassroots donations and refuse contributions from Washington lobbyists.
But one top Obama fundraiser, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter, said the campaign wants to bring the Clinton finance team on board to help ensure that it would have enough money to counter any attacks from independent Republican groups, like the Vietnam Swift-boat veterans who damaged Senator John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004.
“I think the Swift-boating is what everybody fears, that they’ll be running countless TV loops of Reverend Wright,” the fundraiser said, referring to Mr. Obama’s controversial former pastor, Jeremiah Wright.
Others said that encouraging the Clinton fundraisers to get behind Mr. Obama would also be a boon for the Democratic National Committee, which has lagged far behind its Republican counterpart in raising money that can be used to support the presidential nominee as well as Democratic candidates at all other levels.
Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton have each promised to raise money for the D.N.C., which can accept contributions of up to $28,500 from each donor and which hopes to raise several hundred million dollars.
Mr. Obama also has had a powerful team of more than 360 fundraisers who have each brought in at least $50,000 for him, and several dozen of them are raising at least $200,000.
Some of those fundraisers said they had already tapped most of the people they could for the maximum individual donation of $2,300 for the primaries, though Mr. Obama’s emergence as the nominee would undoubtedly stir up new donors. Under federal law, each donor could also give an additional $2,300 for the general election.
But any Clinton fundraisers who join the Obama team could still seek the full $4,600 for him from Mrs. Clinton’s backers, providing perhaps an even larger infusion of money from traditional donors.
Campaign-finance records show that through April, $53 million, or nearly one-third of the $169 million that Mrs. Clinton had raised for the primaries, came from people giving the full $2,300.
She also had raised — and must return if Mr. Obama wins the nomination — more than $23 million in donations for the general election. Fundraisers on both sides said it would be relatively easy for her fundraisers to encourage many of the wealthy donors to redirect the money to Mr. Obama’s campaign.
A bigger question, they said, is whether Mr. Obama’s advisers would be willing to go far enough in bridging the cultural divide between the campaigns to motivate the Clinton fundraisers to work hard.
People on both sides said Mrs. Clinton’s fundraising operation has been more highly structured, and some of the Clinton fundraisers are worried about whether they would get enough credit and support within the Obama campaign.
Mr. Obama’s team is also planning to have Mr. Obama speak in June and July at a series of large fundraising events, each designed to raise from $3 million to $5 million for his campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The Clinton fundraisers, by contrast, have preferred more intimate events, where their big donors could spend time with Mrs. Clinton or her husband.
So far, the talk in the Obama camp has mainly focused on inviting top Clinton fundraisers to the meeting in Chicago on June 19, where any who were willing to raise $250,000 for Mr. Obama could join his national finance committee.
But Mr. Nemazee, the Clinton finance co-chairman, said he would like to see the two fundraising operations merge more substantially, with some of the Clinton fundraisers given national and regional leadership positions, as has been done in past presidential races.
“When people are raising money, they want to know that at the end of the day, someone knows what you did, that there is an institutional memory for all this,” he said.
Griff Palmer contributed reporting for this article.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company |
