Julianna Smoot will soon join Jim Messina on Obama's fundraising team. Obama reelection starts cash chase

President Barack Obama’s 2012 fundraising team has begun nailing down major cash commitments from top donors during a coast-to-coast “listening” tour — the surest sign to date that the vaunted Obama money machine is back in business.

Former White House deputy chief of staff Jim Messina, along with Hollywood producer-turned-Democratic fundraiser Rufus Gifford, has been aggressively recruiting big-money contributors who maxed out to the 2008 campaigns of Obama and Hillary Clinton, donors and party officials told POLITICO.


One of their pitches: an offer to join a new “National Finance Council,” which would entail a contribution to the Democratic National Committee of up to $61,600 per couple, per year. That money could be used to fund support operations for Obama’s reelection effort, in addition to smaller donations they would be expected to make directly to Obama’s as-yet-unincorporated Chicago-based campaign, according to donors.

The decision to ask for the DNC’s $61,600 up front, while hardly unprecedented, has taken some Democratic fundraisers by surprise. In part, that’s because it comes so early in the cycle — before any clear GOP frontrunner has emerged.

But that kind of commitment from wealthy donors could crowd out the party’s cash-hungry congressional committees, which are desperately competing for 2012 contributions, often from the same source.

Under current federal campaign finance limits, individuals can contribute a total of about $71,000 to committees, campaigns and PACs — leaving donors with $10,000 or less in post-Obama discretionary income.

“It’s just like them to think about themselves first,” said one Democratic congressional fundraiser, referring to the Obama campaign team.

But Tony Podesta, a lobbyist and prominent Democratic fundraiser, said the congressional committees will do just fine, joking that Obama donors can recruit “their older children” to finance the Hill committees, “or maybe their former spouses.”

“It’s not a big deal, and [it’s] in line with what everyone would expect,” he added.

Obama, who has repeatedly sought to smooth tensions with Hill Democrats, will headline a joint fundraiser in Florida on Friday for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and Sen. Bill Nelson, an occasional critic of the president.

Messina, an Idaho-bred operative who has been technically unemployed since leaving the West Wing earlier this year, has been barnstorming the country, previewing a two-tiered fundraising strategy to tap donors large and small during invitation-only events in Chicago and New York.

POLITICO has learned that Messina held similar events — previously unpublicized “donor listening sessions” — last week for top donors in San Francisco and Boston.

And he will hold a new round of meetings next week, which will kick off on Tuesday in Miami, where he is expected pitch Obama to a Florida Gold Coast Democratic base won over by Clinton three years ago.

From there, Messina, who is expected to be named Obama’s 2012 campaign manager, will head to Texas from Wednesday to Thursday for meetings with wealthy Democrats in Dallas, Austin and possibly Houston, according to a party official.

The entire operation took a brief hiatus recently when the peripatetic Messina went to Africa for a post-White House vacation.

Julianna Smoot, Obama’s hard-driving 2008 finance director and architect of an operation that raised a record-shattering $745 million, will leave her job as White House social secretary to work her donor list full time and reassemble her team of regional fundraisers.

There are other stirrings: DNC Chairman Tim Kaine will host a gathering of major Obama fundraisers in donor-rich Fairfield, Conn., on March 9 to discuss strategy. The event will be co-hosted by millionaire Ned Lamont, who beat Joe Lieberman in Connecticut’s 2006 Democratic Senate primary but lost the general election to him and ran unsuccessfully last year for the party’s nomination for governor.

James Torrey, a powerhouse Obama fundraiser on Wall Street and CEO of hedge fund Torrey Associates , is another co-host for the event, according to an Obama ally.

The rules for contributors are the same clean-hands rules as last time, with a ban on cash from PACs and lobbyists and Messina telling supporters, “We are doing this our way,” according to one donor. He’s also reportedly pushed back on the hype that the campaign will raise $1 billion, telling associates a repeat of ‘08’s $745 million will be just fine, considering Obama faces no meaningful primary challenge next year.

So far, the embryonic operation is being run out of DNC’s cramped headquarters near the Capitol — and Messina’s overnight bag. That will change sometime in the next three weeks, when Obama OKs the creation of his new campaign committee.

Some of the first staff hired are likely to be more fundraisers, sources say, and they will eventually move to office space rented in Chicago, and join former White House senior adviser David Axelrod who has taken up semi-permanent residence at Manny’s, his favorite Chicago deli.

Still, the big money donors are only a part of the Obama strategy. Small donors, who played a major role in the campaign last time, remain the cornerstone of the campaign’s fundraising strategy – and its self-image as a rewrite-the-rules, grass-roots powerhouse.

The DNC’s in-house fundraising staff used Obama’s revamped master list to recruit small donors for the midterms. The results, which one party official described as a “dry run for 2012,” exceeded expectations — and Obama’s team is hopeful that two years of governing won’t dent his popularity with small-contribution, online donors.

“On the surface, 2012 looks like a much tougher year for Obama to raise all this money.The economy is worse from last time, plus a lot of people are really disappointed in his performance,” said one Democratic fundraiser not affiliated with Obama’s 2008 campaign.

“But these guys seem very, very, very confident, so I wouldn’t underestimate them.”