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Clinton urges support for Obama at Washington fundraiser

BY GLENN THRUSH | glenn.thrush@newsday.com

June 27, 2008

WASHINGTON - Hillary Rodham Clinton gave Barack Obama the key to her campaign war chest last night - but it remains to be seen if her top fundraisers will unlock their checkbooks for her former rival.

Obama, facing about 300 skeptical Clinton fundraisers in the ballroom of the Mayflower Hotel, greeted the group by promising to help retire part of her $21-million debt - and proved the point by announcing he had written a check to the former first lady's campaign.

"I'm going to need Hillary by my side campaigning during this election and I'm going to need all of you," Obama said, adding he'd urged his top fundraisers "to get out their checkbooks and start working to make sure Senator Clinton" retires her debt.

Obama delivered a personal check for $4,600, for himself and his wife, Michelle. The maximum individual donation allowed by law is $2,300.

Later, former Democratic National Committee director Terry McAuliffe, Clinton's national chairman, told reporters that an online fundraising campaign to deal with the debt had raised $500,000 in its first day.

For her part, Clinton - appearing with Obama for the first time since her June 7 announcement that she was suspending her campaign - made an impassioned pitch for her supporters to raise cash on his behalf. "We have to make it a priority in our lives to elect Barack Obama the next president of the United States," Clinton told the group, which helped raise more than $200 million for her second-place effort.

Despite the display of unity, some on Clinton's money team remained skeptical, even as the campaigns coordinated efforts for today's public rally in Unity, N.H.

"Senator Clinton was greeted with thunderous applause but there was a conspicuous drop-off when Senator Obama was introduced," said Heidi Li Feldman, a Georgetown Law School professor who raised $60,000 for Clinton on the Internet. "He said he wasn't interested in our checks but in our virtual Rolodexes," said Feldman, who didn't say if she planned to raise funds for Obama. "But the last time someone said they weren't asking me for a check, you know, they ended up asking me for a check."

Clinton donors were reluctant to bad-mouth Obama, but a top former Clinton campaign official told Newsday that "there was clearly a number of people in the room" who would offer only minimal assistance to their party's candidate.

"People are still mulling it over. The conversation started tonight," said Clinton fundraiser Jeffrey Marburg-Goodman.

The Illinois senator fielded about 10 questions from the audience but punted when asked if he would allow Clinton's delegates to symbolically vote for her on the convention floor.

Obama was on safer ground when he spoke about how his grandmother in Hawaii expressed sympathy for Clinton during the campaign. "When I see that instinct of hers to fight on behalf of those who need a champion, she reminds me a little of me," he quoted her saying.