Obama plays to half-empty house for grassroots fundraiser

Spread the love

Loading

Barack Obama has had some success already in raising money for his 2012 re-election bid, at least when it comes to big-ticket donors and high-value fundraisers.  Yesterday, Obama tried his hand at harnessing the kind of grassroots passion that helped elevate him past Hillary Clinton in the 2008 primaries and roll to a historic victory over John McCain, becoming the first Democrat since Jimmy Carter to win a majority of the popular vote in victory.  As Politico notes, Obama was decidedly less successful with the mainstream than with the elite Democratic donors he’s been wooing lately:

A low-dollar fundraiser here Monday felt like a throwback to the 2008 campaign. … The one missing element? Overflowing crowds.

Granted, it was a fundraiser, not a free rally. But the empty seats were hard to miss.

The top level of the 2,200-seat concert hall at the Adrienne Arsht Center for Performing Arts was entirely empty, as were the seats along the side of the second and third levels.

“The expectation was 900,” a Democratic official said, and more than 980 tickets were sold.

The unnamed Democratic official is grasping for spin in this case.  No one in politics would book a 2200-seat venue if they only expected 900 people to show, especially not for a Presidential appearance.  Campaigns want standing-room only crowds and wall-to-wall people for optics that reinforce the notion that the candidate remains wildly popular.  Had they expected 900 attendees (at $44 each to remind voters that Obama is the 44th President), they could have found a venue in Miami or its environs that would have properly framed that kind of attendance for the media.

For instance, a quick search turns up the New World Symphony center’s Performance Hall, which seats 756 people for banquets.  That would probably fit the remaining 140 or so people in theater seating formation.  South Beach has The Clevelander, which has a reception capacity of 1000 people.  The Awarehouse might be a little avant garde, but it still can get 800 people in for a reception, which would have cost $4400 in receipts but a lot less embarrassment.

Read more

0 0 votes
Article Rating
Subscribe
Notify of

1 Comment
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments

Even at his ”other” fundraiser in Miami, the one he took in $10,000 per person, Obama only had 80 people in attendance.
One was Chief executive of k1 Ventures, Greenstreet Partners LP, a merchant bank he founded in 1989. Greenstreet Equity Partners LLC, GS Maritime Holding LLC Chairman and Samsonite’s former CEO Steven Green, who also served as Clinton’s ambassador to Singapore, and who was the host.
Mr. Green will also be a new executive of Guggenheim Capital as soon as the ink dries on the agreement.

Another one of those big business guys Obama likes, not the man who runs a business.
Nope.
The man who makes money by trading milliseconds at a time.
If they aren’t in acedemia, these are the only other economist-types Obama looks up to.