President Obama may be the Democrats’ biggest liability this election cycle — but he also remains the party’s best fundraising asset.
Democratic congressional candidates have spent the final months of the campaign running away from Obama, his faltering foreign policy record and his low poll numbers, even as they benefit from millions of dollars he has raked in for them through national party committees during the cycle.
So far this year, the president has held 64 major fundraisers — all but one for national Democratic Party committees this year, according to Brendan Doherty, a professor of political science at the U.S. Naval Academy and author of the book The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign.
“Even unpopular presidents are the most effective fundraisers for their party,” Doherty told the Washington Examiner.
The rising costs of campaigns and the emergence of super PACs that can accept unlimited donations “have placed even more pressure on presidents to spend substantial time raising money for their fellow party members” in the smaller amounts the law demands, he said.
Still, it’s a strange transformation for a president known for his ability to connect with voters of all ages on the stump, sidelined to hobnobbing with wealthy donors at private residences — mostly behind closed doors and off-limits to the press.
In October alone, Obama huddled in the backyard of actress Gwyneth Paltrow’s Los Angeles home, where he spoke to a small group of wealthy contributors. Days later, he traveled to Greenwich, Conn., for a fundraiser hosted by real estate developer Rich Richman. An event at Richman’s $26 million estate drew criticism from liberal comedian Jon Stewart.
“It may not be the best way to send a message about your contempt for money in politics, with back-to-back fundraisers from the homes of Lady Goop and literally a man named Richy Rich,” Stewart said.
Stewart also took a shot at Democratic fundraising emails he said reek of “frequency and desperation.”
The battle for control of the Senate has racked up records for the amounts raised and spent this cycle for candidates on both sides of the aisle.
Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden have tried to make up for the president’s low approving rating, which has been hovering around 41 percent, by doing their part to collect cash.
By some estimates, they had raised a combined total of at least $50 million by the end of September from events they’ve headlined for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee alone.
In doing so, Obama is carrying on a fundraising tradition. Second-term presidents usually have a hard time hanging onto their party’s seats in Congress and have hit the fundraising circuit to help out.
In 2006, George W. Bush held 74 fundraisers benefiting individual races and Republican Party committees, and in 1998, during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, President Clinton headlined a record 115 of them.
At the time, the popularity of both Bush and Clinton reached all-time lows. In 2006, Americans were growing increasingly fed up with the Bush administration as they watched death tolls rise in Iraq amid a virulent insurgency.
But unlike Bush in 2006, all but one of Obama’s fundraisers this year have benefited a national campaign organization: the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee or the Democratic Governors Association.
In contrast, the majority of Bush’s fundraisers in 2006 were held for specific candidates.
“President Obama might be able to raise more money from fewer events with his fundraisers for his national party organizations, but we can’t say for sure,” Doherty said.
The Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision, which allowed outside entities to raise and spend unlimited amounts of money on campaigns, may be one reason why Obama chose to headline events for party committees instead of individual candidates.
“The difference here with Citizens United is you have the ability with all these outside groups to go out and raise money, and it’s going to benefit the candidate anyway,” said Meredith McGehee, policy director for the Campaign Legal Center.
“You kind of have the best of both worlds,” she pointed out. “You don’t have to have a president drag you down by raising money directly for you, and party committees don’t have as many strict limits on what they can do with the money.”
Democrats also may have learned from Bush’s mistakes. Many of the candidates Bush raised money and stumped for directly in 2006 in swing states, such as then-Sens. George Allen of Virginia, Mike DeWine of Ohio and Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, ended up losing their seats.
“The problem with this election cycle is that Democrats are defending territory they never should have held in solidly red states,” said Jennifer Lawless, an associate professor of government at American University.
As a result, Democrats in particularly tight contests have worked overtime to distance themselves from Obama.
Incumbent Sen. Mark Begich, D-Alaska, recently told the Washington Examiner that Obama isn’t “relevant” and will be “gone in two years.” Alison Lundergan Grimes, who is in a tight race in Kentucky against Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, has refused repeatedly to say whether she voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012.
Obama’s comment in early October that while he isn’t on the ballot this November, his policies are, only made matters worse as Republican Senate candidates and outside GOP groups quickly produced ads highlighting the remark.
The candidates’ aversion to Obama has limited the president’s travel mostly to a handful of governors’ races in Wisconsin, Maine, Rhode Island, Michigan and Connecticut in the week before the election.
During a swing through Detroit on Saturday, Obama was in the rare position of rallying voters on behalf of Senate candidate Gary Peters. Peters, an incumbent House member, enjoys a healthy lead in the polls in his Senate race against Terri Lynn Land, a former Michigan secretary of state.
The president told the crowd that electing Peters would help boost Democrats economic agenda, but he also was clearly using the event to promote voter turnout, arguing that Republicans were preventing such popular Democratic proposals as promoting equal pay for women, raising the minimum wage and helping people repay their student loans.
Just two days before, Obama used his visit to Maine both to campaign for Gov. Mike Michaud and raise funds for the DNC, an event closed to the press.
McGehee doesn’t blame Obama or Republicans for spending so much time at private events with big donors.
After Citizens United, she said, there is “no logic to pursuing donations from average Americans.”
“It’s an arms-race mentality set on steroids,” she said. “It’s like what bank robber Willie Sutton said when asked why he robbed banks — ‘Because that’s where the money is.’ ”
