Obama's one big advantage going into 2012 election: fundraising (The Christian Science Monitor)

Washington – President Obama faces an uphill battle for reelection, with unemployment projected to remain high at about 9 percent through 2012 and job approval ratings in the tank.

But as an incumbent president facing no primary challenger, Mr. Obama enjoys one big advantage: fundraising. So far, he has raised $155 million for both his campaign and for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which will help his reelection effort. That’s way more than all the Republican candidates have raised, combined.

All that money allows the Obama campaign to start organizing now in the key battleground states, renew contacts with the 2008 voters, and recruit volunteers. The Republicans, meanwhile, are still figuring out who their nominee will be.

RECOMMENDED: Six liabilities for Obama in 2012

Obama’s advantage comes not just in the quantity of money he has raised, but in the opportunity for efficiency. Thus, an early emphasis on high-dollar fundraisers, because each one is a three-fer: In one fell swoop, Obama is pulling in cash for his opponent-free primary season, the general election, and the DNC. If a donor maxes out on all three, that’s $35,800.

“When you’re president, you don’t have time to do two fundraisers a day,” says Anthony Corrado, an expert on campaign finance at Colby College in Waterville, Maine. “[The big fundraisers] allow them to be very efficient with the principals’ time – not just the president, but also the first lady and vice president.”

Another reason to hit the high rollers early: The $30,800 donation limit to the DNC is annual. The Democrats want their big donors to give this year, so they can ask for another $30,800 next year.

For other reasons, small donors are also critical. We don’t see a lot of press releases about the high-dollar events, but plenty of hoopla about how many folks have gone online and sent in even a few bucks.

The Obama campaign home page has a big ticker at the top counting the number of donors. On Monday, the campaign was so excited about reaching its one-millionth donor that press secretary Ben Label sent out a screen shot of the ticker close to 1,000,000 and then another one when it was at exactly 1,000,000.

Last Thursday, in an e-mail to supporters, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina highlighted the number of people who donated in the third quarter of this year a€“ a record 606,027 a€“ before getting to the grand total of money raised, $70 million to the campaign and DNC. Those who donated made 766,000 donations, with 98 percent of them at $250 or less. The average donation was $56.

“That support translates directly to what we can do on the ground,” Mr. Messina writes. “In the past three months we’ve grown our organizing staff by 50 percent, and opened up three new field offices every week. Thousands of volunteers and organizers made 3 million phone calls and in-person visits to voters.”

Donations from the financial services sector present a mixed picture for Obama and the Democrats. The president has raised $15.6 million from employees of that industry, according to an analysis by the Washington Post of data from the Center for Responsive Politics. But some $12 million went to the DNC.

In a head-to-head matchup against leading Republican candidate Mitt Romney, a founder of the private-equity firm Bain Capital, Obama doesn’t fare too well in financial-sector donations. The president has raised just $3.9 million, versus $7.5 million for Romney, the Post reports.

Still, Obama and the DNC have had some success in raising money on Wall Street. One-third of the president’s top 40 fundraisers come from the world of finance, including former New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine of MF Global, hedge-fund manager Orin Kramer, and UBS executive Robert Wolf, according to the Post.

But the president isn’t exactly advertising the Wall Street support he does have, as he strikes a populist tone in speeches and tells reporters he understands the frustration expressed by the Occupy Wall Street movement.

In the end, Obama’s healthy fundraising numbers – so far, $89 million for his campaign and $66 million for the DNC – don’t tell us much about how he will do on Election Day, Nov. 6, 2012.

“What it shows you is that he retains a loyal base of support,” says Mr. Corrado. “He’s going to amass the sums needed to be financially competitive with whoever the GOP nominee is. But the real question is going to be whether the investment he’s making now in organizing and campaigning is going to be enough to overcome general perceptions about the state of the economy.”

RECOMMENDED: Six liabilities for Obama in 2012

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Going public: Strauss-Kahn accuser tries rare path (AP)

NEW YORK – The hotel housekeeper accusing Dominique Strauss-Kahn of sexually assaulting her is telling her story publicly, she says, because she wants the former International Monetary Fund leader behind bars. But it's hard to say whether her striking move will help or hobble her goal.

Nafissatou Diallo's decision to speak out in media interviews is an unusual and risky move for an accuser at this point in a criminal case, legal experts said.

It gives her an empowering chance to tell her side of the story as prosecutors weigh whether to press ahead with the case amid their concerns about her credibility. But it also enshrines a version of events that defense lawyers could mine for discrepancies with her grand jury testimony or use as fodder to argue she was seeking money or public attention.

Whatever the outcome, "it's an extraordinary turn of events, I would say, for her to go on a kind of lobbying, public relations campaign to get this case tried," said Pace Law School professor and former prosecutor Bennett L. Gershman.

After staying silent for nearly two months about an alleged attack that Strauss-Kahn vehemently denies, Diallo gave her account to Newsweek and ABC News.

Adding details and her own voice to the basics authorities have given, Diallo said the former IMF leader grabbed and attacked her "like a crazy man" in his $3,000-a-night Manhattan hotel suite on May 14 as she implored him to stop and feared for her job.

"I push him. I get up. I wanted to scare him. I said, `Look, there is my supervisor right there,'" she told Newsweek in an interview in her lawyer's office. But Strauss-Kahn said no one was there to hear, she said, and he went on to yank up her uniform dress, tear down her pantyhose, forcefully grab her crotch and then grip her head and force her to perform oral sex.

Strauss-Kahn's lawyers on Monday called the interviews "a desperate distraction from the key fact that Ms. Diallo has had to admit to misleading" prosecutors.

The interviews come with the case against Strauss-Kahn in limbo after Manhattan prosecutors raised doubts about the housekeeper's overall credibility. They said on July 1 that she had lied about her life story and gave inconsistent descriptions about what she did right after the alleged attack.

The disclosures prompted her lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, to criticize the district attorney, press prosecutors to keep going with the case and even call for a special prosecutor to take over.

Diallo told her interviewers she wants Strauss-Kahn held accountable, and she was going public to tell a story she said had never wavered, to counter misleading portrayals of her and to address doubts about her trustworthiness.

"I want him to go to jail. I want him to know there are some places you cannot use your power, you cannot use your money," she told Newsweek.

Diallo told ABC she didn't know Strauss-Kahn was a high-profile French politician until later.

"I was watching the news and they said he's going to be the next president of France," she said. "I said, `Oh, my God.' I was crying. `They're going to kill me. I'm going to die.'"

Before Sunday, the 32-year-old Guinean immigrant's name had been reported by some French media outlets but not by major U.S. media, which generally protect the identities of people who say they've been sexually assaulted.

"I never want to be in public, but I have no choice," she said, according to ABC News. "God is my witness I'm telling the truth."

But against the backdrop of uncertainty about her believability and motives, the interviews may raise as many questions as they answer, legal observers said.

"On the one hand, there's an upside that perhaps it will encourage the prosecutors to move forward with their case. On the other hand, there's the risk that whatever she says can be used against her in a civil or criminal case, especially with respect to any inconsistencies," said Sanford Rubenstein, a New York lawyer who has represented victims in noted cases — and advised them not to give interviews while the case was ongoing, he said. His clients have included Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant who was tortured in a New York City police station bathroom in 1997.

Prosecutors generally discourage potential witnesses in criminal cases from speaking outside court while a case is pending, partly to avoid creating multiple accounts that could diverge, even slightly. In a trial, such gaps can become thin edges of a wedge for adversaries to drive doubts about an accuser's veracity into jurors' minds.

"The more that's out there, the more you're susceptible on cross-examination," said Elizabeth Crotty, a defense lawyer and former Manhattan assistant district attorney.

The housekeeper's interviews also could provide an avenue for Strauss-Kahn's lawyers to suggest she was out for publicity or cash, a notion that already has shadowed the case. A day after Strauss-Kahn's arrest, she was recorded alluding to his wealth on a phone call with an incarcerated friend, a law enforcement official has said.

Newsweek said she had not ruled out trying to make some money from her situation, a suggestion that a civil lawsuit could be forthcoming, though she told the magazine, "I don't think about money."

The interviews nonetheless could tempt prosecutors to bow out rather than go forward with the case because "she's already trying it in the court of public opinion," Gershman said.

The DA's office has said its investigation, not external factors, will determine the outcome. Communications chief Erin Duggan said Sunday the investigation was continuing and declined to discuss the case further.

In the interviews, Diallo addresses some of the inconsistencies that already have rocked the case.

She testified to a grand jury that after the alleged attack, she cowered in a hallway and watched Strauss-Kahn leave, then told a supervisor. Prosecutors said earlier this month that she later told them she actually had gone on cleaning rooms before consulting her boss. Diallo told Newsweek she was disoriented and went into the rooms briefly before a supervisor appeared and asked why she was upset, but the maid denied changing her account.

Diallo also lied about her background, including by telling prosecutors an emotional story of being gang-raped in her homeland, they said. She told Newsweek she was raped by two soldiers but acknowledged she had embellished her life story on her 2003 asylum application; prosecutors have said she told them she repeated the lies to them to be consistent.

Strauss-Kahn lawyers Benjamin Brafman and William W. Taylor III rapped Diallo for conducting what they portrayed as a media campaign to pressure prosecutors to pursue Strauss-Kahn as she perhaps plans to sue him. They have said whatever happened in the suite wasn't forced, and they are pressing for the case to be dismissed.

"Nothing can camouflage the lies and misstatements that Ms. Diallo has consistently put forward against an innocent person to law enforcement, friends, medical professionals and members of the media," they said in a statement Monday.

Thompson fired off a statement of his own Sunday, saying Strauss-Kahn's lawyers "have conducted an unprecedented smear campaign against the victim of a violent sexual attack."

The American Bar Association's professional conduct rules tell lawyers not to make public statements out of court that are likely to prejudice the case. But the rules don't apply to their clients and in a heavily covered case like Strauss-Kahn's, it's questionable how much any lawyer's remark "will affect the jury when there's so much publicity already out there," said Ellen Yaroshevsky, a legal ethicist at Yeshiva University's Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law.

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Jennifer Peltz can be reached at http://twitter.com/jennpeltz

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