He won a second term, but Barack Obama isn’t done fund-raising. The president will appear at a cozy reception for fewer than 65 guests with tickets priced at $32,400 per couple at the Manhattan home of movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and his designer wife Georgina Chapman on May 13, Page Six has exclusively learned.
The invitation explains attendees get “a frank and intimate discussion with the president” where they can ask questions, and afterward Obama will “say thank you to each guest and take a photo with them.” A Weinstein-hosted fundraiser in August brought out Anne Hathaway, Aaron Sorkin and Anna Wintour.
“You may be asking why [Obama] needs to hit the trail and start fund-raising so soon after his successful re-election, and the reason is twofold,” the invite explains.
“Even Republicans concede that part of our victory stemmed from the fact that with no primary opponent . . . our re-elect team used the extra time to build a large campaign operation melding a grass-roots army of 2.2 million volunteers with groundbreaking technology . . . We can’t let them use the next two years to catch up.”
And, “The DNC is the only organization whose sole mission is to support the president and help him pass his agenda, whether that’s gun control or immigration reform. The White House alone doesn’t have the manpower or the resources to withstand the attacks and control the message.”
But Obama’s visit has annoyed political insiders who want to see results for the dollars they’ve already forked over. “We’ve got a mayoral race he’ll be getting in the way of,” said one. “We should be focusing on that and individual congressional candidates. It’s like ‘Lord of the Flies’ . . . [Obama] is cannibalizing donors.”
And others expressed fund-raiser fatigue: “It is stunning that [Obama] is back here fund-raising. We’d like to see some results for the money we’ve already given. And his impact on the traffic congestion in the city is the perfect example of why we need an infrastructure bill that he’s never put any muscle behind.”