Obama Rewarded ’08 Fund-Raisers, Barring Some From Helping Now
Pool photo by Johnny Green
Restrictions apply to some of the president’s supporters who are ambassadors. They include Louis B. Susman, with Queen Elizabeth II.
By MARK LANDLER
Published: July 24, 2012
WASHINGTON — When President Obama named Hillary Rodham Clinton secretary of state after the 2008 election, he turned a rival into a loyalist. But he also lost Mrs. Clinton as one of the most popular Democratic fund-raisers for his re-election effort, since the nation’s chief diplomat is not allowed to engage in campaigning.
Etienne Laurent/European Pressphoto Agency
Charles H. Rivkin, with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Hitoshi Maeshiro/European Pressphoto Agency
John V. Roos
Kevin Lamarque/Reuters
Matthew Barzun can help the campaign because he is no longer an ambassador.
The same restriction applies to the State Department’s ambassadors around the world, nearly two dozen of whom were fervent supporters of Mr. Obama in 2008, raising tens of millions of dollars for his first presidential campaign. He rewarded these backers with coveted diplomatic appointments to London, Paris, Tokyo and other capitals. Now, as federal employees, they are legally barred from reopening their gilt-edged contact lists.
It is one of the few handicaps of incumbency, and in a year when the Obama campaign says Mitt Romney and Republican-affiliated “super PACs” could raise more money than the president, it could be a significant disadvantage, if one difficult to quantify.
A spokeswoman for the Obama campaign, Katie Hogan, declined to comment on the impact of donors-turned-diplomats, except to say that the campaign is raising money at a healthy clip in all the cities, and from all the demographic groups, where the ambassadors once prospected. On Friday, the campaign reported that it raised $45.9 million in June and released a list of nearly 200 individuals who had raised at least $500,000 for the president.
“A fund-raising operation continues, if it’s effective, to find new donors and fund-raisers,” said Andy Spahn, a Democratic consultant in Los Angeles who helped organize a fund-raiser at the home of George Clooney that raised $15 million. “It’s not to say that bundlers don’t matter, but there are always multiple raisers in every community.”
Still, another fund-raising official with close ties to the campaign, said: “The reason these people were in those jobs is because they were so energetic. You lose a lot of the energy they brought to the game. You can’t really replace that.”
More than a dozen current or former ambassadors were listed by the 2008 campaign as being in the top tier of bundlers — fund-raisers who collected a minimum of $500,000 in checks from other donors and bundled them together. The campaign does not disclose specific figures above $500,000; the total for several of these people most likely ran into the multimillions.
The ambassador to Japan, John V. Roos, was one of Mr. Obama’s biggest fund-raisers in Silicon Valley. The ambassador to France, Charles H. Rivkin, was one of the earliest fund-raisers in Southern California. And the ambassador to the Court of St. James’s, Louis B. Susman, was a leading bundler in Chicago. Mr. Susman has such a prodigious track record as a Democratic fund-raiser that he has been nicknamed the “vacuum cleaner.”
A few of Mr. Obama’s fund-raisers cycled through their diplomatic posts quickly enough to be back in time for this election. Matthew Barzun, a technology executive who served as ambassador to Sweden from 2009 to 2011, is the current national finance chairman of the Obama campaign. In 2008, he was deputy to the finance chairwoman, Penny Pritzker.
Nicole A. Avant, who served in the Bahamas until November 2011, drew stinging criticism in an internal State Department audit for lengthy absences from her post. But back home in Beverly Hills, she played host to Michelle Obama at a fund-raiser in late January that attracted boldface names like Jeffrey Katzenberg, Harvey Weinstein and Quincy Jones and raised nearly $700,000.
Together, Ms. Avant, Mr. Katzenberg, Mr. Spahn and other bundlers have helped offset the departure of Mr. Rivkin, an entertainment executive who ran the Jim Henson Company and was the California finance co-chairman in 2008.
Political appointees to high-profile ambassadorships are often greeted with skepticism abroad as cronies of the president. But they also bring a pre-existing relationship with the president. Mr. Obama, in announcing the appointment of Mr. Roos to Japan in 2009, noted, “He’s somebody who will be able to advise me directly on issues that may arise and opportunities that may arise in the U.S.-Japanese relationship.”
Nearly 80 percent of bundlers who raised $500,000 or more for Mr. Obama were appointed to posts in the administration, according to a 2011 report by the Center for Public Integrity, which tracks campaign finance issues. While most envoys got perches in coveted capitals like Prague, Brussels, Vienna, Copenhagen or Oslo, a few were sent to commercially or politically delicate posts like Canada and South Africa.
Mr. Rivkin and Mr. Susman declined to comment, but neither seems tempted to return early to the United States. In June, Mr. Rivkin took part in a mass parachute jump to commemorate the 68th anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy. A spokeswoman for the embassy in London, Lynne Platt, said Mr. Susman was planning events that would keep him busy into 2013.
Mr. Susman clearly remains fascinated by the race, however. Waiting in the Rose Garden in March for Mr. Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron of Britain, he quizzed reporters about whom Mr. Romney might choose as a running mate.
Mr. Roos, who did not answer a request for comment, last year became the first American ambassador to Japan to attend a peace memorial in Hiroshima. A former partner at a Silicon Valley law firm, Mr. Roos has become an inveterate Twitter user, publishing messages on baseball, Justin Bieber, and Mrs. Clinton, many in Japanese.
Other major fund-raisers in diplomatic posts include Alan D. Solomont, a Boston health care entrepreneur and longtime Democratic bundler, who is now in Madrid; David Jacobson, a Chicago lawyer, now the ambassador in Ottawa; and Norman Eisen, a Harvard Law School classmate of Mr. Obama’s who served as the head of the White House office on ethics before being named ambassador to the Czech Republic.
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