Tag Archives: David Geffen

California

CA LT Governor Race: Florez Strikes Gold In Hahn’s Back Yard; Hahn Leaves Town To Seek Funds

2 Comments

In what has to be a major embarrassment to LT Governor candate and LA City Councilwoman Janice Hahn, when it comes to campaign fundraising, it appears she does not have the support of many high profile SOCAL residents she has served and/or live “in her own back yard“. While she heads out of town this week headed for Oakland for two campaign fundraisers, Candidate and State Senator Dean Florez, has not not one, but TWO MAJOR campaign events in the Los Angeles area.  

The two campaign events in Oakland for Hahn, both arranged by Oakland City Attorney John Russo, are for a $150 per person breakfast at the Cathedral Building Gallery and a $300 a head luncheon at Leavened East, both on Thursday December 10.

Meanwhile, candidate Florez supporters will have a show of force on Monday, December 14th, when top luminaries in their field, from real estate, medicine, and the arts show their support at The Regency Club in Los Angeles.

Billionaire philanthropist and healthcare visionary Patrick Soon-Shiong, M.D., is inviting Florez supporters to join him and a who’s-who of California success stories for a reception honoring the candidate at The Regency Club in Los Angeles. Co-Hosts for the event include actor Martin Sheen, Janet and Jerry Zucker (who directed the movies  “Ghost” and “Airplane”). David Geffen, the billionaire record executive, film and theater producer and philanthropist, who cofounded “Dreamworks” and medical luminaries Dr. Richard Merkin, and Dr. Gary Michelson, and Ed Roski and Rick Caruso, noted real estate developers also known for their philanthropic activities. Tickets start at $2000 and range up to $13,000.

A second campaign event for Florez, ONE HOT DECEMBER NIGHT, again in Southern California (Los Angeles), will be held on December 17 at The Myan. Fundraising tickets are running $20. to $6,500.

I don’t know about you, but it seems to me a candidate for Statewide office surely would have the strong support of those in his or her own area, especially those who are high profile and known for supporting Democratic candidates for statewide and national office. One single donation to Florez at his first event could wipe out the entire event donations at the Hahn fundraisers. This turn of events (all to happen in the span of a week or so) surely cannot be a good omen for the Hahn campaign, especially this early in the campaign for LT. Governor.  

Uncategorized

The Hollywood Schism: Geffen, Obama, and Clinton.

3 Comments

David Geffen, formerly a Friend of Bill, is now a leading supporter of Barack Obama.  Of Hillary’s machine he says, “That machine is going to be very unpleasant and unattractive and effective.”

Probably true, but Team Hillary isn’t going to take that stuff lying down. Arianna details the blunderous response of Clinton’s team:

It didn’t take long for Clinton Inc to prove him right. Not long after Dowd’s column hit the streets, “that machine” whirred into high gear with Clinton Communications director Howard Wolfson firing off a press release condemning Geffen and urging Obama to denounce him:

  While Senator Obama was denouncing slash and burn politics yesterday, his campaign’s finance chair was viciously and personally attacking Senator Clinton and her husband.

  If Senator Obama is indeed sincere about his repeated claims to change the tone of our politics, he should immediately denounce these remarks, remove Mr. Geffen from his campaign and return his money.

The thing is, Geffen is not Obama’s “finance chair” nor his “principal fundraiser” as Wolfson also claims. Indeed, as Geffen told me this morning: “I have no official role in the campaign. None whatsoever.” Which makes it kind of hard for Obama to “remove” him.

And it gets better over the flip…Speaking of Obama, the videos from the Boxer/Obama event will be up in a few minutes.

At dKos, pontificator’s got a rec’d diary on Obama’s response.  Apparently those folks now how to deal with attacks:

Update: Well, the Obama campaign responds rapidly, and we’d add, pretty much just as sharply. From Robert Gibbs, the campaign’s communications director:

We aren’t going to get in the middle of a disagreement between the Clintons and someone who was once one of their biggest supporters.
It is ironic that the Clintons had no problem with David Geffen when was raising them $18 million and sleeping at their invitation in the Lincoln bedroom.

It is also ironic that Senator Clinton lavished praise on Monday and is fully willing to accept today the support of South Carolina State Sen. Robert Ford, who said if Barack Obama were to win the nomination, he would drag down the rest of the Democratic Party because ‘he’s black.'”

In all honesty, Clinton was in a glass house. I don’t know what they were thinking in attacking Geffen.  It also risks alienating Geffen’s friends, Katzenberg and Spielberg (SKG of Dreamworks SKG fame), who are still giving money to Clinton in addition to Obama.  Apparently Obama knows how to build a team.

Blog Roundup

Odds and Ends 11/14

Originally I had planned on only doing this until the election, but I’ve found it quite satisfying to just write a short pithy comment on each story and move on to the next.  Also, I felt that I had been ignoring so many issues out there.  These will probably be shorter now, but I’ll try to get these out daily during the week.  No guarantees though. 🙂

So, teasers: Waxman attacks?, Jerry goes to DC, the failure of the metrics, and the LA Times saga continues.  Plus more!!

  • Will Henry Waxman challenge President Bush?  You know as well as I that there is no love lost between these two.  Waxman wants to investigate some of the policies of the Bush administration, and that is his job as Chair of the House Gov. Reform Cmte.  There are issues of war profiteering that have never been answered, and those should be investigated.  But the “storm of subpoenas” that the conservatives have been talking about? Don’t expect it…unless of course Bush has a reason to stonewall the sunshine.  When Waxman had subpoena power, he issued NO subpoenas.  The same can not be said of the Republicans in the Clinton era.
  • Mr. McNerney goes to Washington.  No word on his new committee assignments, but expect him to push hard for a spot on the Energy Committee, where he can put his background in wind energy to use.  As he campaigned on making the 11th a district focused on renewables, expect him to push for more resources on biofuels, wind, solar, etc.
  • A friend of mine forwarded me this from the Capitol Morning Report, a subscription only service.  It is an op-ed of sorts by strategist Tony Quinn, one of the editors of the California Target Book, about the failure of the GOP GOTV machine that Duf Sundheim (CRP Chair) had been pushing so hard.  The GOP GOTV in California completely failed to extend Arnold’s coat tails.  In a year when Dems had a weak top of the ticket, when you would expect some level of push back from the GOP, they got nothing.  In California, the Rove strategy of motivating the base just won’t work.  Of course, that’s especially true when you have a president who is hated, even by his base.  It all added up to a very poor night for everybody except Arnold. And Poizner I suppose, but I think anybody not named Cruz could have won that race.  Here’s a portion of the article:

    The much-touted Schwarzenegger/Republican get-out-the-vote effort in this election turned out to be a big flop. It’s not the first time the GOP effort to turn out its own voters has failed; but this year the party convinced itself that it would make a difference.
         The Schwarzenegger campaign spent millions on phone banks and mailers, the campaign flooded Republican mailboxes with slick brochures and pestered voters with robo calls at dinner time, something Republicans call micro-targeting. (I received three calls from “Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger” telling me to vote while hosting an early election night party at my home and I had voted weeks ago.)
         They said this would bring out Republican voters, but it did not. Why? There are several reasons. Certainly a factor was Republican disgust with Bush and Iraq that kept many of their voters home. A large number of safe Republicans saw their vote percentage fall from 2004 levels. For instance, Sacramento GOP Rep Dan Lungren received only 59 percent this year; two years ago, he received 62 percent. That three percent drop was stay-at-home-Republicans. All the robo calls in the world could not get these voters to the polls.
         But that’s not the whole story. Republican registration is just 34 percent of statewide voters, an historic low. Republican strategists seem to believe they can overcome their registration deficit by pushing a higher turnout among their loyal voters, thus the robo calls and slick mailers aimed at GOP voters.
         But they fail to recognize that an appeal to the GOP base alone is not sufficient to win any longer in California. There are simply not enough like-minded voters outside the Republican base to forge a victory. Just look at the difference between Schwarzenegger and the rest of the Republican ticket.

  • The LA Times and the Tribune Company, its parent, are the subject of several takeover bids.  David Geffen is rumored to be trying to buy the Times from the Trib, and several bidders are trying to buy the Tribune Company.  As to how this will all turn out? Who knows, but one thing that is clear is that LA and the Times would be better off without the Tribune Company and its conservative ownership involved in the day to day operations of the paper of record on the West Coast.