Obama juggles needs for campaign money, mass appeal

US: As his reelection campaign heats up, President Barack Obama is attending fundraisers about one of every four days, with experts saying he is working to raise a whopping billion dollars to stay in the White House.

"There are a lot of people who are still hurting all across the country, a lot of people here in Florida, a lot of people everywhere," Obama told a small group of supporters the other day.

He was not speaking at a soup kitchen. It was at the luxurious Orlando home of Dallas Mavericks basketball guard Vince Carter -- to just 70 guests who paid $30,000 a plate to hear him speak.

And the fundraiser at Carter's home was the third of the day for the Democratic president, who is in fundraising overdrive.

Eight months before the presidential election, the haste to raise campaign funds risks blurring the message of a president who champions the middle class against Republican opponents, particularly multimillionaire Mitt Romney.

Kareem Crayton, a political science professor at the University of North Carolina, says Obama "needs to find every dollar that he can get, because it's pretty clear that this campaign is going to involve two candidates that will need to have a billion dollars." Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, eager to portray the president as independent of big money donors, says, "Our average donation is $55, and 98 percent are $250 or less." Most of the campaign's money came from "more than 1.3 million Americans," Messina said.

Other fundraisers by the president are not intended for the masses.

Since February 15, Obama participated in 11 fundraising meetings that returned more than $12 million for his campaign.

AFP