Joe Biden coming to Seattle: A four-figure pricetag to see him

Vice President Joe Biden tours the Renton Technical College, celebrating a recent recipient of a U.S. Department of Labor job-driven training grant. It was a rare public appearance. Vice President Joe Biden tours the Renton Technical College, celebrating a recent recipient of a U.S. Department of Labor job-driven training grant. It was a rare public appearance. Photo: JORDAN STEAD, SEATTLEPI.COM Photo: JORDAN STEAD, SEATTLEPI.COM Image 1 of / 6 Caption Close Joe Biden coming to Seattle: A four-figure pricetag to see him 1 / 6 Back to Gallery

Joe Biden will be behind closed doors.

The former vice president is coming to Seattle on June 29 for a pair of big budget fundraisers, one hosted by an influential figure in the LGBTQ community, the other in the Medina digs of a former Microsoft fundraiser.

The addresses are familiar: Ex-Microsoft President Jon Shirley twice played host to President Obama on quickie fundraising visits by the 44th president. The tab for Biden's Eastside foray is $2,800.

Public affairs executive Roger Nyhus hosted Hillary Clinton campaign chief Robby Mook in 2015, after Mook had spoken the night before to a Human Rights Campaign dinner. Nyhus helped launch Ed Murray's successful 2013 challenge to then-Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn.

"I'm hosting an intimate fundraiser for his presidential bid," Nyhus wrote Sunday on his Facebook page.

The Biden visit (and Cory Booker's appearance earlier this month) speak to what Washington state has become in Democratic politics: We are an ATM.

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Obama staged all of one free public event, a Husky Stadium rally in 2010 for Sen. Patty Murray --during eight years in the White House. He would fly in, head for a Medina or Hunts Point mansion, once detouring to far northwest Seattle. The tab to sit and question Obama -- five figures.

Occasionally, as in a Seattle Convention Center rally for Gov. Jay Inslee, the price tag was affordable for non-corporate Democrats.

Nyhus once tried to rescue the fortunes of Seattle Mayor Paul Schell, and later served as communications director for then-Gov. Gary Locke.

He has been on something of a roll of late. Nyhus Communications was honored last week by the Puget Sound Business Journal as a leading LGBTQ-owned business in the region. It has long represented Alaska Airlines.

Nyhus has just completed the redecorating of his Capitol Hill home -- dubbed the White House -- where Biden will be feted.

Biden is an appropriate guest. The vice president came out for same-sex marriage in 2012 while Obama was still "evolving" on the issue. The White House had to hastily arrange an interview with Robin Roberts of ABC News to bring Obama on board.

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Biden was speaking at a Human Rights Campaign dinner in Ohio earlier this month, while other Democratic presidential hopefuls were in San Francisco for litmus test fest put on by MoveOn.org

The media have been given the smallest of access to big-bucks Democratic events. (Jim Brunner of The Seattle Times posted an amusing series of cold-shoulder tweets on breaking the Biden visit story.)

A press pool was escorted into Eastside mansions to hear Obama's stump speech, but ushered out the moment he began to answer questions. Hillary Clinton did not even go that far during her forays into the Seattle area. All events were closed to media coverage.

The chilly campaign of the 2016 Democratic presidential nominee held a single public event in Seattle, a pre-caucus rally at Rainier Beach High School.

After successful lobbying by Democratic State Chair Tina Podlodowski, the Washington Legislature has moved the state's presidential primary up to March. The results of the primary -- not party caucuses -- will determine allocation of delegates to next year's Democratic National Convention.

Podlodowski has voiced hope the earlier primary will force her party's presidential candidates out of their fundraisers and into the open.

It hasn't happened -- yet.