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Obama Yields in Marshaling of

by marauder29 , Posted to Fishing Buddy on 02/07/2012 11:38 AM | "Quote" | "Quick Reply" |
marauder29

Joined: 05/24/2002
Location: ND
WASHINGTON — President Obama is signaling to wealthy Democratic donors that he wants them to start contributing to an outside group supporting his re-election, reversing a long-held position as he confronts a deep financial disadvantage on a vital front in the campaign.
Aides said the president had signed off on a plan to dispatch cabinet officials, senior advisers at the White House and top campaign staff members to deliver speeches on behalf of Mr. Obama at fund-raising events for Priorities USA Action, the leading Democratic “super PAC,” whose fund-raising has been dwarfed by Republican groups. The new policy was presented to the campaign’s National Finance Committee in a call Monday evening and announced in an e-mail to supporters.
“We’re not going to fight this fight with one hand tied behind our back,” Jim Messina, the manager of Mr. Obama’s re-election campaign, said in an interview. “With so much at stake, we can’t allow for two sets of rules. Democrats can’t be unilaterally disarmed.”
Neither the president, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., nor their wives will attend fund-raising events or solicit donations for the Democratic group. A handful of officials from the administration and the campaign will appear on behalf of Mr. Obama, aides said, but will not directly ask for money.
The decision, which comes nine months before Election Day, escalates the money wars and is a milestone in Mr. Obama’s evolving stances on political fund-raising. The lines have increasingly blurred between presidential campaigns and super PACs, which have flourished since a 2010 Supreme Court ruling and other legal and regulatory decisions made it easier for outside groups to raise unlimited donations to promote candidates.

The Republican National Committee sharply criticized the decision. A spokesman, Joe Pounder, declared: “Yet again, Barack Obama has proven he will literally do anything to win an election, including changing positions on the type of campaign spending he called nothing short of ‘a threat to our democracy.’ ”
The outside groups are playing an increasingly prominent role in the presidential race by running aggressive advertising campaigns, often attacking opponents. Mr. Obama said in 2008 that he did not want support from outside groups and took a strong stand against the influence of special-interest money in politics, effectively shutting down independent activity on his behalf.
For his re-election campaign, he did not object to the formation of Priorities USA Action, which is run by two former White House aides, but until now had done nothing overtly to help the group. His past criticism of outside groups, some Democrats said, had made it hard to persuade donors to back Priorities USA Action, contributing to its problems in keeping up with conservative groups.
“It’s hard to pass the plate for super PAC money while Democratic leaders have been preaching about the sins of it,” said Robert Zimmerman, a New York fund-raiser for Mr. Obama. “But the reality is, it is essential in 2012.”
Several Democratic financiers said they were alarmed last week by fund-raising reports from the major Republican super PACS. Two groups that were formed with help from the Republican strategist Karl Rove, American Crossroads and Crossroads GPS, raised $51 million between them last year for the Congressional and presidential races. Groups supporting specific Republican presidential candidates brought in roughly $40 million.
But the major Democratic groups, including Priorities USA Action, raised only $19 million for the year. Those lopsided figures led Mr. Messina to send his top network of donors an e-mail last week urging them to raise more money.
“Due to unlimited and unprecedented super Pac spending, we may have no spending advantage (as we did in 2008) and could in fact get outspent,” Mr. Messina wrote in the e-mail. “I thought this might help you put the other side’s efforts into some context as you talk to friends and supporters about why we need their help and we need it now.”
But major donors to Mr. Obama said in interviews that they were not sure the Democratic super PAC’s lackluster fund-raising was due entirely to the president’s public misgivings about outside spending. One longtime, high-dollar Democratic fund-raiser said it was also partly a result of Wall Street’s anger at Mr. Obama’s statements and policies concerning bank regulation, some of which have sent former Obama donors and fund-raisers to the Republicans.
Yet negative sentiment has also been shared by some of the party’s more liberal donors. For instance, Democratic fund-raisers said they took it as a bad sign that the billionaire businessman who contributed $27.5 million to Democratic efforts during the 2004 presidential campaign, George Soros, said Mr. Obama reminded him of Mr. Romney.
“There isn’t all that much difference,” Mr. Soros said.
Michael Vachon, an adviser to Mr. Soros, said Mr. Soros had been too focused on the financial crisis in Europe and emerging African democracies to decide the extent to which he would help Democrats this year.
Mr. Vachon said that for many party members, engaging in super PACs after railing against them for so long created some sense of “psychic dissonance.”
“It takes either a very sophisticated or very cynical person to decry the nefarious influence of money on politics and then turn around and write a check for $5 million to influence elections,” he said.
With its new policy, the Obama campaign is embracing an aspect of the new super PAC era that has brought particularly loud objections from groups seeking to diminish the influence of moneyed interests in Washington. The decision comes four years after Mr. Obama became the first presidential candidate since the Watergate era to turn down public financing and the accompanying spending limits, allowing him to raise $750 million for his 2008 campaign.
This election cycle, the financing rules are considerably different, with an unlimited crush of money coming from corporations and wealthy donors. Federal candidates and their campaign representatives are not permitted to coordinate their strategies with the groups seeking to help them with unlimited donations.
But, after the 2010 Supreme Court decision eased campaign finance restrictions, the Federal Election Commission determined that candidates and their representatives could appear at events held by the groups seeking to help them. Mr. Romney provided an early test case last year when he appeared at a Central Park fund-raising event for the group seeking to help his candidacy, Restore Our Future. He spoke to the donors about his aspirations and then left before Restore Our Future’s representatives discussed their detailed plans.
The Obama re-election campaign intends to follow a similar pattern, aides said. The president will not attend fund-raising events, they said, but several members of his inner circle from the West Wing and his Chicago campaign headquarters have been designated to deliver speeches about the re-election effort. The intent is to imply his blessing for Priorities USA Action, which is run by Bill Burton and Sean Sweeney.
The designated group includes Kathleen Sebelius, the secretary of health and human services; David Plouffe, a senior adviser at the White House who ran the 2008 campaign; and Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser and a close friend of the president’s. Other top Obama aides helping the effort include David Axelrod, one of the president’s top political strategists, and Mr. Messina, the campaign manager.
Mr. Obama has consistently spoken out against the new rules that allow unlimited contributions from corporations and wealthy donors. “But for 2012,” Mr. Messina said, “our campaign has to face the reality of the law as it currently stands.”
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Posted By: marauder29
Posted On: 02/07/2012 11:38 AM
73 Views, 0 Comments

Tags: obama, rsquo, super, marshaling, yields, pac, 0, jim, politics, lsquo
More Tags: Barack Obama, Supreme Court, Republican National Committee, Joe Pounder, spokesman, PoliticsBusiness_Finance
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