There was a mad dash for tickets to President Obama’s New York fundraiser Monday night with Ricky Martin and gay activists in the 24 hours after Mr. Obama announced his support for gay marriage, but the Obama campaign tried to tamp down talk of the rush to cut checks, according to opensecrets.com, a site that tracks money in politics.
“That was hardly the message the Obama campaign wanted to project,” the website reported. “By the end of last week, campaign staffers were discouraging some of its more prominent LGBT fundraisers from speaking with the press. The concerns, said one person on background, was that Republicans would jump at the chance to say Obama made his announcement in order to fill his campaign account and those of groups backing him.”
The broader fundraising impact of Mr. Obama’s declaration in support of same-sex marriage won’t be known until mid-June, the next Federal Election Commission filing deadline. But even before his announcement, he enjoyed strong support from the gay community.
Mr. Obama’s list of bundlers, those mega-fundraisers who have pledged to hit up their circle of friends for checks for the president’s re-election, contains at least 27 prominent individuals or couples who are part of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community, opensecrets.com reports. Those 27 have raised $7.85 million as of March 31, amounting to 7.4 percent of the campaign’s total haul. While 5 percent of Mr. Obama’s bundlers are gay, at least one in nine of his top-tier bundlers — those who promise to raise $500,000 or more — are LGBT.
