A Vermont police chief said President Obama’s re-election campaign has failed to reimburse local taxpayers after his officers had to work overtime to provide security at two fundraising events. Trevor Whipple, the police chief in South Burlington, told Fox News that his department incurred $4,200 in overtime expenses as a result of separate fundraising events featuring President Obama and the First Lady. “At the end of the day, I’ve submitted an invoice and they haven’t paid,” Whipple told Fox News. “It was an additional burden on our taxpayers, on our budget and we simply wanted to ask that they reimburse us.” . . .
In fact, Obama’s reelection campaign has a split personality when it comes to the general election. One side is confident and growing more so about the turbulent GOP primary, an improving U.S. economy, and better numbers for Obama in swing states. The other side harbors fears bordering on paranoia about massive spending by the GOP and outside super PACs for the party’s nominee.
“There is already unprecedented super-PAC spending going on,” Messina said. “There will be super-PAC spending in key states against us. We have to be prepared for that.”
To prepare for it, Obama’s campaign has put the rest of the Democratic Party on a starvation diet. Messina and senior White House adviser David Plouffe (Obama’s 2008 campaign manager) have told top Democrats that they won’t receive any cash transfers from Obama’s campaign or the Democratic National Committee. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi sought commitments for $30 million, the amount distributed to them in the 2008 and 2010 election cycles. Not this time.
Messina said that the campaign fears outside groups will devote upward of $500 million to anti-Obama super-PAC TV ads as soon as the GOP nominee (likely to be Romney) is decided. By comparison, GOP nominee John McCain spent $333 million on his campaign, and outside groups spent $26 million supporting him. Obama spent $730 million in that campaign, and outside groups spent $88 million attacking him. . . .
Reid and Pelosi, according to Democrats aware of the sit-down with Plouffe and Messina, took their medicine without complaint. Democrats close to the situation said that the leaders emerged feeling that Team Obama was in full-blown panic mode about the need for campaign cash this fall. “They are just freaked out about super-PAC spending,” said one of Pelosi’s top allies. . . .
He has attended St. John’s Episcopal Church several times — most recently in December — but the Obamas have been only occasional churchgoers. . . . Each time the president has stepped into an African American church in the District since his inauguration — six times, to be exact . . .
In a sort of power lunch for the not-so-powerful, President Barack Obama broke bread Friday with four winners of a contest for people who give to his campaign in small amounts.
The suggested donation to enter the drawing: $3.
The winners, including a teacher and an Afghanistan war veteran, gathered at Scion, a restaurant serving trendy, Asian-inspired cuisine in Washington. The Obama re-election campaign has offered the meals with the president, first lady Michelle Obama and Vice President Joe Biden to boost online contributions. . . .
On a trip tinged with campaign-season politics, President Obama left the Beltway Monday for a bus tour of Midwestern locales to try and connect with voters who over the past several days have hosted his aspiring Republican rivals.
The three-state tour is considered an official White House visit, at a time when the nation is reeling from a succession of economic setbacks. With Americans showing historic levels of frustration with Washington, the president will try to feel their pain
The president landed in Minnesota shortly before noon and will head next to Iowa before finishing his trip in Illinois. Obama's mission to ease Americans' concerns about their jobs could have the added effect of helping him keep his own. The latest Gallup tracking poll showed the president's approval rating at an all-time low of 39 percent.
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters Monday that Obama will not outline a specific economic proposal but will be listening to Americans' ideas about how to repair the economy. He said the president is visiting areas with relatively low unemployment to find out what's working.
With poll numbers falling for both Obama and Congress after a nasty political fight over raising the country's borrowing limit and spending cuts, Americans are in a bad humor. . . .
US President Barack Obama has begun a campaign-style speaking tour to make a case to voters for action to boost the US economy and create jobs
The White House has clearly taken note. Obama is on the road this week in three crucial Midwestern states, where he is lambasting Congress and talking jobs. . . .
BERLANGGANAN VIA EMAIL
