Pool Report of Obama’s Chicago FundraisersTIME: 6:45pm CT-9:45pm CT
EVENT: Barack Obama Fundraisers in Chicago
Senator Barack Obama appeared at back-to-back fundraisers in Chicago Thursday evening.
Venue one was a benefit for the White House Victory Fund, at the home of Sara and James Star in Lincoln Park. The entrance fee: $28,500 a head. Sixty people attended. Total estimated haul: $1.7 million.
Before Mr. Obama arrived, the guests waited on the first floor of the incredibly large and ornate home, eating mini beef tenderloin burgers and drinking white wine and Champagne. Mr. Obama arrived at 6:45, mingled for a while, talked to nearly everyone in the room (by his own estimate) and then moved upstairs to speak in a large, cathedral-ceilinged room decorated with oil paintings and a large bronze sculpture of a crouching insect.
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At one point, Mr. Obama looked around the room for Rick Fizdale, a contributor who five minutes earlier had quietly slipped outside and left. Mr. Fizdale, a former Leo Burnett executive, had left wearing a homemade nametag bearing the words “Rick Hussein Fizdale.” (Everyone else wore printed nametags.)
“They have these wonderful stickers that said, ‘Rick Hussein Fizdale,’” Mr. Obama said. “The theory was, we’re all Hussein.”
He went on: “But that accurately captures, I think, the strategy. Come on. They’re going to try to make me into a scary guy. They’re even trying to make Michelle into a scary person. Right? And so that drumbeat – we’re not sure if he’s patriotic or not, we’re not sure if he is too black. I don’t know, before I wasn’t black enough. Now he might be too black. We don’t know whether he’s going to socialize – well, who knows what.”
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He paused to mention his much-photographed bike ride with one of his daughters last Sunday. “There was no setup,” Mr. Obama promised. “I was not trying to pander to this crowd.”
When one bicycle enthusiast yelled out, “Thanks for wearing a helmet!” Mr. Obama suggested that before donning the helmet, he remembered one of the cardinal rules of politics: never allow yourself to be photographed wearing nerdy headgear.
“I had an internal debate,” he said. “Because I knew that the A.P. was going to take a picture, and they were trying to portray it like Dukakis wearing that tank helmet. But I wanted to make sure that the children who saw that picture knew that even the Democratic nominee for president wears a helmet when he goes biking. (Hearty applause.)
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http://thepage.time.com/pool-report-of-obamas-chicago-fundraisers/
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