Orin Kramer

When the Obama campaign’s unprecedented capacity to raise money online started to become apparent during the Democratic primary, Orin Kramer, the most established of Barack Obama’s early supporters in the mega-bundler community, took to disparaging his own New York-centric breed of major Democratic fund-raisers as “dinosaurs.”

But Mr. Kramer, an undisputed leader among this ancient, wealthy, largely Manhattan-based species of political fund-raiser, is still very much alive.

The Obama campaign has notified its most productive New York bundlers that to mount a decisive financial advantage over John McCain, it will for the duration of the campaign need to place a renewed emphasis on raising money the old-fashioned way.  read more »

The night of Wednesday, July 9, was supposed to be when Barack Obama appealed directly to his supporters to help Hillary Clinton erase her campaign debt.

But he almost forgot to do it.

After finishing his speech to a room full of New York donors at the Grand Hyatt without any mention of helping Clinton with her debt, reporters ran over to Obama's spokeswoman Jen Psaki, who was already spinning hard that Obama's failure to make a pitch was no big deal. ("He said a lot of things," she said.) Then the music stopped and Obama, very awkwardly, started speaking again.

"Hold on a second, guys -- I was getting a little carried away," he began.  read more »

While many of the guests last night at the 20th anniversary reunion dinner for supporters of Al Gore's first presidential campaign wore campaign-style buttons that said "Al Gore reunion 2007," there was little serious talk about Gore entering the 2008 presidential race, according to one attendee.

"People do not perceive him as sending mixed signals," said the guest. "People have a very deep loyalty to him, but they have gotten involved in other campaigns."

That didn't keep the 45 or so veterans of many a presidential campaign from discussing the declared Democratic candidates.

"You can't put together a bunch of jockeys in a room and not talk about horseracing," the guest said.

Attendees at the buffet-style dinner at the Washington house of Gore confidant Peter Knight included Gore's current chief-of-staff Roy Neal, and nationally recognized fund-raisers Mary Pat Bonner, Charles Bone, Carol Pensky, Robert Zimmerman, Orin Kramer and Allan Kessler.