Obama for America sent an email Monday night from David Axelrod promoting President Barack Obama’s speech to families in Newtown, Conn., following the fatal shootings at the Sandy Hook School. A link in the email to a video of the speech led to the campaign website, featuring two buttons for financial donations.
Axelrod did not ask for donations in the email itself. The Web page included a “Donate” button at the top and a second “Quick donate” button asking for $5.
“Last night, President Obama addressed the families of Newtown, offering the love and prayers of a nation, and vowing to use whatever power his office holds to protect our children from such unthinkable acts of violence,” Axelrod wrote. “He spoke from the heart — as a president and a parent.”
Financial solicitations appear on most of the Obama for America website’s pages, but few pages are reachable primarily through an email from the president’s leading campaign operatives.
Axelrod ended his email by encouraging Americans to help make the country a better place.
“As we reflect on the lives lost last week, we must also, as the President urged, consider how each of us can play a part in making our country worthy of the memory of those little children,” he concluded. “I hope you and the ones you love have a happy and safe holiday.”
As the New York Observer’s Political Ticker reported in early December, Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said the Obama for America organization would continue to exist in some form after the election.
“The one thing I know is that people want to be involved in supporting the president’s agenda in the next four years,” the Observer quoted Messina saying at a post-election breakfast hosted by the political news website Politico.
“How that looks is a discussion we have to have with our grassroots.”