When Sen. Barack Obama began running for president in 2007, a small handful of determined, inspired supporters found a new political calling. A new group of professionals — from a San Juan jewelry store owner to a West Coast biotech executive — raised hundreds of thousands of dollars each for him and their “bundling” was crucial in helping Obama offset Hillary Clinton’s profound financial and institutional advantages.
Four years later, many of those new bundlers say they won’t be coming back. For reasons ranging from disillusion and dissatisfaction to an overriding sense that the once idealistic Obama crusade has become yet another soulless political behemoth, that inspired cadre of early Obama supporters has largely been replaced by professional Democratic Party operatives.
Campaign officials deny that there’s any “enthusiasm gap,” and indeed the new operation appears to be on track to raise as much money as Obama did in his record-setting 2008 campaign. But the identity and mood of the campaign is very different.
The shift among bundlers is part of a broader transformation of an insurgent candidate of hope and change to an incumbent president grinding out his reelection amid the very real and often daunting world of Washington politics. As POLITICO reported recently, Obama’s small dollar fundraising effort will rely more on technical muscle and massive numbers — and less on raw inspiration — in 2012 than it did in 2008. Calls to most of the 105 people who “bundled” more than $200,000 for Obama in 2008 but didn’t appear on a list of bundlers released last week suggest the same is true of some of his more large-sum volunteer fundraisers. While Obama’s campaign always depended in part on Chicago institutional money, office-seekers, and other traditional fundraising sources, the new campaign will be more machine and less dream, more sweat and less inspiration.
“It’s a political machine now,” said Pete Garcia, the chief financial officer of a Washington State biotech company who fell for Obama early and hard in 2008, and raised more than $200,0000 in his first dive into political fundraising.
“I wasn’t doing it to be an ambassador or anything like that. I was doing it because I strongly believed in his message. I just thought that he would be a little more different than he is,” said Garcia, who said he expects to vote for Obama but won’t be involved in the campaign.
Obama has lost another share of top bundlers for other reasons: They’re ambassadors or other appointees, with plum embassies from London to Luxembourg now occupied by top fundraisers. About half of the very top tier of bundlers — those who brought in more than $500,000 —were rewarded with political appointments.
But Obama’s staff says both classes of dropouts have been replaced with a motivated new generation.
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