Obama looks to tap Clinton’s top fund-raisers

By Christopher Drew and Leslie Wayne

updated 12:06 a.m. ET June 4, 2008

As Senator Barack Obama claims the Democratic presidential nomination, his campaign is gearing up to recruit many of Senator Hillary Clinton ’s top fund-raisers, a move that could provide him with a huge infusion of cash if the two camps can get past the rancor of the primary season.

Several of Mr. Obama’s finance officials say that if Mrs. Clinton drops out of the race, they will invite her top fund-raisers to join his national finance committee at a meeting in Chicago on June 19. They estimate that the well-connected Clinton team could raise $50 million to $75 million for Mr. Obama and even more for the Democratic Party, adding to the already record-shattering amounts he is receiving from small donors over the Internet.

So far, the contact between the two sides has been limited to informal talks among fund-raisers in major cities, and Mr. Obama’s advisers stressed that they would not take any steps to court Mrs. Clinton’s fund-raisers as long as she remained in the race. But top fund-raisers in both camps say they have always expected to coalesce behind the nominee. And Mr. Obama’s advisers say that strong support from the Clinton fund-raising machine could be important to their campaign if, as is widely expected, he opts out of the public financing system in the general election against Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Mr. Obama has already raised three times as much money as Mr. McCain. And the combination of his Internet appeals and the Clinton donors could lift Mr. Obama’s fund-raising total to an eye-popping $400 million to $500 million, practically ensuring that the Democrats would outspend the Republicans in the Nov. 4 election and be in position to mount the party’s largest advertising and get-out-the-vote drives ever.

Still, there are sharp differences in how the Obama and the Clinton fund-raising teams have operated, and people on both sides say it could be harder than in past Democratic campaigns for them to pull together. And some campaign-finance experts caution that an influx of high-rolling donors from the Clinton camp could carry some political risks for Mr. Obama, particularly if some of the contributions seemed at odds with his promise to reduce the role of special interests in politics.

Hassan Nemazee, a national finance chairman for the Clinton campaign, said that if Mr. Obama wins the nomination, most of Mrs. Clinton’s top 300 to 400 fund-raisers would support him. But Mr. Nemazee said that how much money they could bring in would depend on how deeply the Obama campaign integrated the two operations, what kind of fund-raising events were held and whether Mrs. Clinton ended up on the ticket as the vice-presidential candidate.

"It would be important how much Senator Obama and his top advisers in Chicago reached out, and how welcome our people felt," Mr. Nemazee said.

Campaign-finance experts said that enlisting the Clinton donor network could blur Mr. Obama’s image as a different kind of politician — and alienate some of his core supporters — if he began taking large sums from corporate executives in industries like financial services and energy that he has criticized on the campaign trail.

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"His victories were because of his ability to use the Internet to get cadres of people to give small donations and to volunteer for him," said Michael J. Malbin, executive director of the Campaign Finance Institute, a nonprofit group in Washington. "If he were to suddenly look like Hillary Clinton in the early months, where he would go only after high-dollar donors, it could turn off people ringing doorbells for him."

Anthony J. Corrado Jr., a professor of government at Colby College and a campaign-finance expert, added that Mr. Obama might not need to take that risk, given the power of his Internet fund-raising juggernaut.

Records show that more than 1.5 million people have donated to Mr. Obama’s primary campaign, and he has raised $121 million, or 47 percent of his total of $256 million in donations, from individuals in amounts of $200 or less.

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"That’s what’s been driving his fund-raising," Mr. Corrado said, "and it has been scaled up to the point that if all the existing Obama donors give $100, and about a third of the Clinton donors do the same, he can have a couple hundred million dollars more."

Mr. Obama’s campaign officials declined to talk publicly about plans to reach out to the Clinton fund-raisers, saying that they did not want to seem disrespectful to Mrs. Clinton.

Ben LaBolt, an Obama spokesman, said in a statement that the campaign was "confident that after a nominee is selected, the Democratic Party will unite at every level." Mr. LaBolt also said the campaign would continue to emphasize grass-roots donations and refuse contributions from Washington lobbyists.

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