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March 16 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama will headline the first fundraiser of his presidency this month, appealing to donors large and small even as the economy struggles through the worst recession in generations.
Obama’s appearance at the Democratic National Committee’s March 25 event at the Warner Theatre in Washington, with tickets ranging from $100 to $2,500 per person, will be an early test of his ability to keep up the record-breaking fundraising he achieved during the campaign.
That may be difficult. While the president’s approval rating remains above 60 percent in most polls, the U.S. is mired in the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression. Those circumstances may close some checkbooks and ***** Obama to tone down his partisan appeals for cash at a time when he is trying to persuade Americans he is focused on fixing the economy.
“After an election cycle, you’re dealing with donor fatigue,” said Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is in charge of raising money for vulnerable House Democrats. “Then you have the added layer of difficulty of the economy really hitting people hard.”
Obama’s advisers acknowledge that striking the right tone at the event -- the first DNC fundraiser under its new chairman, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine -- will be a challenge.
‘Tough Time’
“It is a tough time,” said White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton. “Nonetheless, the president feels a responsibility to help Tim Kaine build a party that will be an effective ***** for progress in this country.”
Republicans said that Obama’s return to the money circuit was premature. “It says a lot about President Obama’s priorities that he would start fundraising so soon,” said Alex Conant, a senior adviser to the Republican National Committee. “The economic crisis should be a higher priority than partisan politics.”
Yet Obama isn’t the first president facing a crisis at home or abroad who has had to balance his role as commander-in-chief with the demands his party places on him.
“We had the same problem,” said Dave Carney, who was political director for George H.W. Bush during the Persian Gulf War and the 1991 recession. “There’s just something unseemly about raising money for partisan purposes when you’re engaged in an act of war or an economic recovery.”
Still, there are ways that the Democrats can soften the partisan edges of Obama’s fundraising activities, such as offering some tickets to smaller-dollar donors. “You don’t want him to be just seen with fat cats,” Carney said.
Recession
Then there are the hurdles to raising money in a recession, a task that’s made more difficult after Obama drained so much from donors during the campaign. Many of them are less likely to give now that the Democrats control the White House and both chambers of Congress.
Fundraising is “definitely not as robust as the same time two years ago,” Wasserman Schultz said.
The fundraiser, featuring singer Tony Bennett, can’t come soon enough for the DNC, which was outraised by the Republican National Committee, $427 million to $260 million, during the last election, according to Federal Election Commission reports. That disparity, however, was more than compensated for by Obama’s campaign that set records by pulling in $749 million, largely by leveraging smaller donations on the Internet.
Through Jan. 31, the DNC had $5.9 million in the bank and $5 million in debts; the Republicans were debt-free and had $22.8 million to spend.
Joe Biden
Party operatives are eager to enlist Obama’s money bundlers, fundraisers who bring in cash from other donors, some of whom raised more than $500,000 for his campaign, to work for the DNC. The effort begins this week, and some top fundraisers have been invited to a reception with Vice President Joe Biden tonight and meetings tomorrow with Kaine, and Obama campaign manager David Plouffe.
The DNC is counting on the Biden reception, which includes the chance to pose for a picture with the vice president, to help entice fundraisers who haven’t contributed to the party, yet supported Obama.
The message, said Steve Grossman, a former Democratic national chairman, is that “by supporting the DNC, you are supporting the president’s goals and objectives and you’re making possible the type of grassroots organizing that will help us win in 2010.”
The president still has tremendous fundraising potential and could prod his donors to become more active.
“Presidential events are a lot more recession-proof than your normal fundraising activities,” Carney said.
