"In Clinton’s Backyard, It’s Open Season as an Obama Fund-Raiser Lines Up Donors"

NY Times:

Twenty-eight stories above Sixth Avenue in Manhattan, Jeh Johnson was dialing away.

The race was on for New York’s prized political donors, and Mr. Johnson, one of Senator Barack Obama’s leading fund-raisers in the city, was trying to poach in the heart of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s financial territory.

Before the day was up, Mr. Johnson got about a dozen people on the phone with the pitch that Mr. Obama represented “a generational shift” away from the partisan chokehold gripping Washington. A few told him they were not ready to give, but more than half said they were willing to sign checks and come to a March 9 fund-raiser at the Grand Hyatt New York.

He called Joyce Johnson, a family friend (she was once his baby sitter) who lives on the Upper West Side and who has run unsuccessfully for State Assembly and the City Council over the past few years. She said she was on board with Mr. Obama’s campaign, with some trepidation.

“A lot of the women who supported me are supporting Hillary,” Ms. Johnson said. She named a West Side activist who has, in the past, raised money for Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Representative Charles B. Rangel, Democrat of New York.

“Ricki Lieberman is like my godmother,” Ms. Johnson said, “And she’s going with Hillary and I’m going the other way. Keep talking to me, Jeh. Give me some sea legs. Tell me what to say.”

Mr. Johnson, whose name is pronounced jay, leaned back in his chair and said: “Joyce, we had 30 or 40 people here in my office last night for a preliminary meeting on this, and another 30 on the phone. One thing you learn quickly is that when the name Barack Obama is involved, you always have more people show up than you expected.”

Mr. Johnson, a lawyer at Paul, Weiss, Rifkin, Wharton & Garrison, is a linchpin in uphill efforts to build a donor base for Mr. Obama in New York, where many potential supporters have at some time in the last 16 years aided the Clintons.

Mr. Obama’s ability to raise significant amounts of money depends on the success that people like Mr. Johnson have among New York’s all-important Democratic fund-raising circles, which the Clinton camp has moved aggressively to corral by battling any perception that elements of the party are drifting away. And part of Mr. Johnson’s pitch must be that by contributing to the Obama campaign, Democrats are not showing disloyalty to the Clintons, a fear that can be heard in his conversations with donors.

“Look, if it doesn’t work out, then hopefully the nominee will get over it,” he told one donor in discussing the possibility of a Clinton victory and its ramifications for the Obama camp. “She’ll need all the help she can get, particularly from the people associated with his campaign.”

The Clintons have dominated the fund-raising race for Democratic-party money in New York since long before Mrs. Clinton held office in the state, Mr. Johnson said. “She and her husband have been working New York for 16 years and they know where they are,” he added. “But I think we’re going to surprise a lot of people with who signs up.”

The Obama campaign has already attracted a number of fund-raisers with ties to Mrs. Clinton or her husband, like Orin Kramer, a prominent hedge fund manager from New Jersey, and James S. Rubin, a private equity manager and son of Robert E. Rubin, the former Treasury secretary. The younger Mr. Rubin was also a finance director for New York during President Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign, and held positions at the Federal Communications Commission during the second Clinton administration.

Other former Clintonites who are raising money for Mr. Obama include Joshua L. Steiner, a private equity principal; Michael Froman, a Citigroup executive; and Brian Mathis of Provident Group. All of them are young (in their 40s) and served in senior positions in Mr. Clinton’s Treasury Department a decade ago (Mr. Froman and Mr. Mathis were friends with Mr. Obama at Harvard Law School). Another high-profile Obama fund-raiser is Earl G. Graves, the publisher of Black Enterprise magazine, who in 2000 was listed by the White House as an overnight guest of the Clintons.

The Obama campaign hopes to draw from pools that barely existed four years ago, particularly hedge fund and private-equity fund principals who only recently acquired their money and their interest in the political process.

But another strategy holds that in order to keep up with Mrs. Clinton, Mr. Johnson and his cohorts will have to succeed at poaching traditional Clinton donors.

Already, the bulk of New York’s traditional Democratic money elite — people on the level of Alan Patricof, Steven Rattner, and Hassan Nemazee — has pledged to support Mrs. Clinton.

But the drift of some New York donors, along with the switch by some former Clinton backers on the West Coast, like David Geffen, has elevated hopes among Mr. Obama’s supporters. There is no consensus among his financial supporters as to whether the feud this week over Mr. Geffen’s critical comments about the Clintons is helping or hindering their efforts. Still, several of them said privately that they had been enjoying the sparring.

“It’s important to demonstrate that Barack’s willing to hit back, though I’m not sure this is the opportunity I would’ve picked,” one said.

Mr. Kramer, the hedge fund manager, remains an admirer of Mrs. Clinton, and said he agonized over the move but was swayed partially by the grass-roots approach of the Obama campaign. “Making choices involving people you genuinely care about is harrowing,” he said. “I made the decision when I did to bring the pain to an end.”

Still, of his new endeavor, Mr. Kramer said, “It’s like the Red Sox looking for fans at Yankee Stadium.”

Mr. Johnson, 49, is aware that his taking up with Mr. Obama marks a defection from the Clintons. He was the general counsel to the Air Force for more than two years during President Clinton’s second term. Mr. Clinton’s trusted adviser, Vernon E. Jordan Jr. — an old family friend of Mr. Johnson —helped him get that job.

Mr. Johnson urged almost every person he reached by phone to look up the speech that Mr. Obama made before the Illinois Senate in October 2002. In the speech, Mr. Obama outlined his opposition to going to war in Iraq, highlighting the sharp contrast to Mrs. Clinton’s vote that year to authorize military action against Iraq.

He is working his connections, which include a 300-person master list heavily weighted with fellow lawyers, members of a black professionals fraternity to which he belongs, and veterans of John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign, for which he served as special counsel.

“Among the attorneys on the Ivy League side, he definitely is appealing,” Mr. Johnson said of Mr. Obama. His pitch to one fellow lawyer with whom he had previously traded calls, was this efficient:

“So, Barack.” Pause. “Sounds like all your buddies from Harvard Law are involved too.” Pause. “Have you met him before?” Pause. “The base level is $1,000.”

Although campaign-finance regulations bar individual donors from giving more than $2,300 per election to a campaign, as a “bundler” Mr. Johnson is expected to raise much more on the breadth of his Rolodex and the depth of his persuasive skills. The invitation to the March 9 event lists Mr. Johnson and his wife, along with about a dozen other couples or individuals, as gala “chairs” who have pledged to raise $100,000 — all in increments of $2,300 or less.

Despite Mr. Johnson’s considerable experience in the political sphere, participation in one of the Renaissance Weekend retreats made popular by the Clintons, and his volunteer position on the Kerry campaign, he did not until last June become a legitimate fund-raising player. He has since been sought out by candidates.

“I got a call from the Menendez Senate campaign, and they asked me to host a party with Bobbi Brown, who has the cosmetics line,” Mr. Johnson recalled (his family and Ms. Brown’s live in Montclair, N.J., a state where Robert Menendez is a senator). “Menendez got Barack and Cory Booker to do this event with us. That was when I met Barack. We raised between $300,000 and $500,000 in one day, and my name was associated with that event.”

In the months that followed, Mr. Johnson said: “John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Jim Webb, Harold Ford, they all came here. Harold Ford, he has his little entourage. He sat right there in the chair next to the TV.”

He had expected to wait for the outcome of the 2008 primaries before signing on with a candidate, but after seeing Mr. Obama hold forth at a fall book-signing on the Upper East Side, Mr. Johnson was won over.

Then, the day before Thanksgiving, Mr. Johnson received a call at home from Mr. Obama.

“He said, ‘I’m thinking about running for president. Can you not commit to anybody until I decide?’ ” Mr. Johnson said. “Now, we really hit it off. I said, ‘Barack, I’m with you.’ ”