Obama on three-day Calif. fundraising tour

SAN FRANCISCO -- President Barack Obama is preaching an economic message aimed at the 99 percent and raising campaign cash among the 1 percent, walking an election-year tightrope complicated by the need for hundreds of millions of dollars at a time of high unemployment.

At a beachside community in southern California yesterday, fresh off a dinner that included actor George Clooney, Obama was in the middle of a three-day fundraising tour through opulent homes along California's coast, a trip to be bookended by images of the president inside factories, talking up job creation.

Obama raised $750 million in 2008, shattering records, and his campaign has outpaced his Republican opponents, collecting more than $220 million in 2011 even as it faces the prospect of hundreds of millions from GOP-backed outside groups targeting his re-election.

To be sure, Obama's campaign has mastered the art of raising money among the masses. In 2011, the campaign said it received money from 1.3 million donors, including 583,000 people who gave during the final three months of the year. More than 98 percent of supporters gave donations of $250 or less and the average donation was $55.

Yet a list of prominent donors released by the campaign shows nearly 450 well-heeled backers who have collectively steered at least $74.7 million to the president's campaign so far.

Fully 62 of them collected at least $500,000 each to give to the campaign, including movie producers Jeffrey Katzenberg and Harvey Weinstein, and Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour.

California, where Obama scheduled six fundraisers during this three-day trip, figured most prominently on his roster of big-money "bundlers." Sixteen are from California; 13 are from New York.

Fundraising is an inescapable aspect of politics, and candidates from both parties tap deep-pocketed supporters for cash and for help raising more from their network of wealthy friends. Many of those donors are the same ones that Obama is referring to when he tells audiences, whether well-off or working class, that the rich must pay a greater share in taxes.

Obama's campaign pitch is aimed at the middle class. He sharpened his focus in a December speech in Osawatomie, Kan., where he decried a growing inequality between chief executives and their workers.