While President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign is already running full tilt, his deputies are attempting to conceal its scale, its spending and Obama’s close involvement.
The latest revelation came buried in a weekend New York Times article, which showed that the president is close contact with campaign manager Jim Messina and senior strategist David Axelrod, both of whom are based in Chicago.
“Mr. Axelrod and Mr. Messina travel to Washington regularly to meet with the president, Mr. Plouffe and others, and speak with their White House counterparts several times a day … [although Obama] has yet to visit the Chicago headquarters,” said the Nov. 26 article, which included on-the-record quotes from both campaign operatives.
White House officials declined to say how many meetings Obama has held with his campaign staff, or to name their “counterparts” in the White House.
The president’s effort to conceal his 2012 campaign’s intensity from public view has already prompted some jibes from Republicans, including former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and House Speaker John Boehner, both of whom say the president has given up trying to negotiate job-boosting deals with Congress.
“President Obama would like Americans to believe he is focused on creating jobs but the reality is the job he cares most about is his own,” said a statement from Kirsten Kukowski, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee.
The news of the meetings “is confirming all of our allegations that the President’s number one priority is saving his own job,” said Rob Lockwood, a spokesman for the North Carolina Republican Party.
“Has the President sat in more campaign meetings with advisers than he has ‘jobs’ meetings with congressional leaders? If he has, that is further proof that the only job he truly cares about is saving his own.”
In addition to its White House meetings, the campaign is also meeting with administration officials in a Washington, D.C. hotel, using presidential visits to jump-start local volunteering, and allocating money from presidential fund-raisers to hire organizers in every state. The campaign also tested its local campaign offices in the November 2011 elections.
Those tests brought mixed results in several swing states. Obama’s allies lost in Virginia and split ballot issues in Ohio. In Lockwood’s North Carolina, the campaign helped win two mayoral races, partly by funding 200,000 phone calls in Charlotte.
However, the president’s campaign team kept out of sight during the November elections, partly because the president’s job approval rating are in the 30-percent range.
For example, Obama avoided the mayoral races during his two trips to North Carolina, and declined to publicly campaign on the Ohio ballot initiatives until the final few days of the election.
The president has raised more than $150 million for his own campaign, and has held 55 campaign-style events in swing states this year. On Wednesday he will fly to Pennsylvania, another crucial swing state, to attend his 56th event in Scranton. The visit is touted as a speech to promote an extension of the tax holiday for payroll taxes, which are intended to fund the Social Security retirement program.
Obama’s pace far exceeds his predecessors’. President Bill Clinton held 40 events between Jan. 1 and November 17 in 1995, while President George W. Bush held 49 events during the same period in 2003, according to a new survey by the Wall Street Journal.
White House spokesman Jay Carney has repeatedly described these campaign-style visits merely as non-election political advocacy.
“As I’ve said many times before, the President is out talking to the American people, hearing from them and explaining to them his ideas for moving this country forward, growing the economy and creating jobs,” he said Nov. 2.
“As I’ve said before, the Republicans may refer to this as campaigning … [but Obama is] presenting his ideas to Americans in a variety of ways, including through the regional television interviews he did from here yesterday, because he feels so passionately that that’s the right thing to do,” he added.
Even as he tries to fly his campaigning under the public’s radar, Obama describes his opponents as already on the campaign trail — while insisting that he is still focused on governing.
“I know it’s not election season yet, but I just have to mention the debate the other party candidates were having the other day,” he said at an Aug. 15 event in Cannon Falls, Minn., before slamming the GOP candidates for not offering to raise taxes.
And two months later during an Oct. 25 campaign event in Denver, Colo., Obama fixed his supporters’ attention on what he said were crucial legislative battles still to be fought. “We still have within our grasp the ability to make sure that once again America is a place where anybody can make it if they try. … That’s what this campaign will be about. That’s why I will need you,” he said.