Republicans need to gain six seats to control the Senate. Americans for Prosperity, funded by billionaires Charles and David Koch, has targeted Democratic senators Mark Begich of Alaska, Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, Kay Hagan of North Carolina and Mark Pryor of Arkansas. The group has run TV ads 21,867 times in House and Senate races through April 21, according to Kantar Media’s CMAG, almost twice as many as anyone else in the 2014 campaign.
The man in charge of fundraising for Democratic senators knows Wall Street. DSCC Chairman Michael Bennet, a Colorado senator whose name is listed below Obama’s on the invitation to the May dinner, worked in debt markets as a managing director of billionaire Philip Anschutz’s Denver-based investment firm.
Obama raised money from investors in New York last month. He attended venture capitalist Alan Patricof’s Democratic National Committee fundraiser on March 11, the same day he headlined a DSCC gathering at the home of Tony James, president of Blackstone Group LP, the world’s largest buyout firm. A White House official confirmed the May 14 fundraiser.
‘The Game’
Effron, who wouldn’t comment for the story, bundled contributions for both of Obama’s presidential races, raising more than $500,000 for 2012, according to campaign disclosures.
He bought his co-op two years ago for $24.5 million. A broker involved confirmed that Post lived in one of the units that make up the apartment before her death in 1960, when “Etiquette” was in its 89th printing.
One longtime Democratic donor who hadn’t heard about the dinner, investor Bernard L. Schwartz, said “money is corrupting the process, but I’m playing the game because that’s the only game you play.”
The 88-year-old former chief executive officer of Loral Space & Communications Inc. doesn’t want to “sit at home and watch television,” he said about fundraising. “If you’re going to play the game, you have to play the game.”