President Barack Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina sent out an official reelection campaign video wherein he said talk of Mr. Obama having a billion dollar campaign war chest is “bullsh*t” because “we don’t take PAC money unlike our opponents. We fund this campaign in contributions of $3 or $5 or whatever you can do to help us.

Mr. Messina’s plea for Obama supporters to chip in “$3 or $5″ leaves the impression of a presidential campaign divorced from big money donors. Furthermore, the claim that Mr. Obama will not accept PAC money leaves the impression that his fundraising efforts are removed from the influence of lobbyists or Wall Street. Nothing could be further from the truth.

From the New York Times:

Despite a pledge not to take money from lobbyists, President Obama has relied on prominent supporters who are active in the lobbying industry to raise millions of dollars for his re-election bid.At least 15 of Mr. Obama’s “bundlers” — supporters who contribute their own money to his campaign and solicit it from others — are involved in lobbying for Washington consulting shops or private companies. They have raised more than $5 million so far for the campaign.

Because the bundlers are not registered as lobbyists with the Senate, the Obama campaign has managed to avoid running afoul of its self-imposed ban on taking money from lobbyists.

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With the GOP debates mercifully coming to an end, the nation is getting ready for the 2012 elections starting with the Iowa caucuses in January.  At this point, President Obama appears likely to face Mitt Romney (seemingly no one’s first choice within his own party), former Speaker Newt Gingrich who miraculously resurrected his once moribund campaign or Ron Paul whose libertarian views we highlighted in a prior essay.

Has either party been faithful to a consistent set of principles?  The Republican frontrunners have fallen all over themselves in internecine warfare accusing each other (not without good reason) of flip‑flopping.  Meanwhile, the President has escaped the spotlight on the issue of his own constancy of principle.  In point of fact, as the incumbent, he should be closely monitored on this subject, since his principles can translate quickly into active government policy.

The criteria used for making appointments to Administration jobs might be a pretty good measure of presidential principle.  Given that Congress is totally dysfunctional, and that the single-digit approval rating our federal legislature has earned from the American people is overly generous, we might have expected the President to be particularly judicious in his appointments to the various executive branch positions that wield such influence in both domestic and foreign affairs.

While it is not unusual for Presidents to reward campaign donors with prestigious federal appointments, many Obama supporters expected better of this President. They were confident that Obama would be as repulsed as they were by the approximately 200 federal appointments of donors and bundlers Bush had made during his eight years in office. Not so.

According to I-Watch, the on-line publication of the non-partisan Center for Public Integrity, President Obama had, at the mid point of his first term, matched Bush’s eight-year record of doling out Administration jobs to donors and bundlers. Overall, 184 of 556, or about one-third of Obama bundlers or their spouses joined the administration in some role. But the percentages are much higher for the big-dollar bundlers. Nearly 80 percent of those who collected more than $500,000 for Obama took “key administration posts,” as defined by the White House. More than half the 24 ambassador nominees who were bundlers raised $500,000.

The big bundlers had broad access to the White House.  In all, during Obama’s first two years in office, campaign bundlers and their family members account for more than 3,000 White House meetings and visits. Half of them raised $200,000 or more.

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President Obama’s 2012 reelection campaign is promising to raise enormous sums of money,  by some estimates and unprecedented $1 billion.  The Finance Chair for the 2012 campaign,  Matthew Barzun, is reactivating the 2008 financial network of campaign bundlers to meet that goal.   In my new book, Throw Them All Out, I expose the scandal that is outrageous and typical: those who are raising money for Obama received large amounts of taxpayer-funded energy stimulus money from the Obama Administration.   It offers a new form of “recycling” when it comes to campaign dollars that is unprecedented.

Consider the sweetheart deals and contracts that have come the way of some of President Obama’s biggest fundraisers:

• Financier David Shaw has raised $1.08 million for Obama’s reelection so far.  Shaw’s firm D.E. Shaw is heavily invested in two wind projects that received taxpayer money:  $115 million for First Wind,  and $117 million for Kahuku Wind.
• Financier John Rogers is a board Exelon board member has raised $1.2 million,  and Frank Clark, an executive Exelon,  has raised $153,000 thus far.  Exelon has been approved for $646 million in Department of Energy loan guarantees for a project called AV Solar Ranch One.  They also received a $200 million Department of Energy cash grant through a company they own called Peco Energy for smart-grid work.
• Financier Steve Westly has raised $302,000 so far.  Westly has held large investment stakes in numerous companies that have received stimulus grants,  including Amyris Biotechnologies ($24 million), Tesla Motors ($465 million),  as well as Edeniqu and Recyclebank.
• Bruce Heyman of Goldman Sachs, who has had three energy projects approved for taxpayer money  Cogentrix ($90 million),  First Solar ($4.7 million), and U.S. Geothermal ($96.8 million) has already raised $366,884 for the Obama 2012 reelection campaign.
• Daniel Weiss of the Angelino Group has raised $39,000 so far.   Weiss’ firm is a major equity holder in Powerspan,  we received a $100 million cash grant for smart grid projects.
• Steve Spinner has raised $31,900 to this point.   Spinner is a green energy investor who worked at the Department of Energy as a “strategic advisor” to the loan program.

Other recipients of energy stimulus money have continued cutting checks.  Ian Cumming of Leucadia,  which has had several large projects approved,  has given $10,000 so far to Obama for America and the Obama Victory Fund 2012.

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From Crain’s Chicago Business:

President Barack Obama’s Chicago-based re-election campaign has a hometown problem: the donors and volunteers who have lost interest after launching his run for the White House four years ago.

The glow of the epochal election of the nation’s first African-American president has faded amid a dramatic fall in the president’s popularity, a persistently lousy economy and an administration that has been less transformative than promised.

And among Jewish contributors, a bulwark of his local donor base, some have been turned off by Mr. Obama’s call for Israel to give up part of its territory.

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