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By Lynn Sweet
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Posted: 10/07/04 12:00 AM [ET] |
With his election all but guaranteed, Barack Obama, the Illinois Senate candidate who is the Democratic Party’s newest star, is already raising national money for federal and local candidates.
The fundraising potential to help others provides Obama with an insurance policy that he hopes will help vault him into the Senate leadership ranks. All the better for Obama if he is seen as a critical element in the Democrats’ winning control of the Senate. The Kerry-Edwards campaign also plans to use Obama as a surrogate.
Obama has been on the receiving end of gushing reporting since he gave the keynote speech at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. What is not well-known about him is how closely his campaign guards his whereabouts and how Obama operates within a zone of secrecy.
My issue is about transparency, not his fundraising forays themselves. Obama is adroitly balancing his fidelity to Illinois with his desire to step out on the national level. He is not ignoring Illinois. He is attentive to the state. However, candidates and officials need to operate in the sunlight, especially when it comes to raising money.
Recently, Obama was the draw in a funder in Philadelphia to help three Senate hopefuls: Ken Salazar in Colorado, Betty Castor in Florida and Joe Hoeffel in Pennsylvania. Earlier this week, Obama keynoted a funder in Davenport, Iowa, to benefit Democratic state legislative candidates in the Hawkeye State.
Neither of those was put on a public schedule; other major candidates or office holders usually put such events on a calendar, even if they are closed to the press.
In recent months, Obama has also traveled to Ohio, Texas, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Alabama, New York, Washington state and Minnesota for fundraisers and speeches.
To my continuing dismay, the campaign has a policy of not revealing most fundraising events in advance, whether in Illinois or anywhere else. The campaign did not release Obama’s schedule for his out-of-state political trips, such as a keynote address he made at the national conference of the anti-Bush 527er America Coming Together in Cleveland.
Nor did Obama’s campaign put anything out in advance about a panel he was on to mark the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision to desegregate schools in the country, on Martha’s Vineyard.
This secrecy does not become the future senator, whose rival, Republican Maryland transplant Alan Keyes, has failed to mount any hint of an effective campaign.
Obama’s press secretary, Robert Gibbs, discloses information about Obama’s travels, usually only as a result of my nagging him, although there have been a few exceptions. I put together the rundown of Obama’s events mentioned above through research, tipsters and, yes, volunteered information from Gibbs.
“I don’t think we operate with a veil of secrecy …’’ Gibbs said. “We provide an appropriate public schedule for reporters to cover public events.’’ Gibbs is a former spokesman for the Kerry campaign, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, then-Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.) and Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) when she was in the House and during her Senate race.
Appropriate? Other congressional leaders — House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) — offer information, when I ask, about their political travels. Then again, they are used to operating in the major leagues.
Sweet is the Washington bureau chief for the Chicago Sun-Times. E-mail:
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