A significant number of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s top fund-raisers remain on the sidelines and unwilling to work for Senator Barack Obama, a nettlesome problem that appears to be contributing to the campaign’s failure to keep pace with ambitious fund-raising goals it set out for the general election.
Even as Mrs. Clinton prepared for her moment in the spotlight on Tuesday night, with a speech expected to offer a strong embrace of the nominee, the lingering rancor between the two sides appears to have intensified with the convention this week, with grousing from some Clinton fund-raisers about the way they are being treated here by the Obama campaign in terms of hotel rooms, convention credentials and the like.
Tensions were already running high going into convention week, particularly in the aftermath of disclosures that Mr. Obama did not vet Mrs. Clinton or ask her advice on his vice presidential pick.
Many major Clinton fund-raisers skipped the convention; others are leaving Wednesday, before Mr. Obama’s speech.
More broadly, a consensus appears to have emerged among many major Clinton donors that the Obama campaign did not do enough to enlist their support, according to interviews with more than a half-dozen Clinton fund-raisers.
“I’ve had more contact from the McCain campaign since the nomination than from the Obama campaign,” said Calvin Fayard, a New Orleans lawyer, major Clinton fund-raiser and longtime Democratic donor who is not in Denver this week.
Mr. Fayard said he was considering supporting Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, citing what he perceived as Mr. Obama’s inexperience.
After Mrs. Clinton suspended her campaign in June, the Clinton and Obama campaigns publicly vowed to work toward integrating Mrs. Clinton’s fund-raising apparatus with Mr. Obama’s.
But it appears that much of that effort has fallen short, said former Clinton supporters who have decided to begin raising money for Mr. Obama.
“I believe to date I’m a minority,” said Hassan Nemazee, a former national finance chairman for the Clinton campaign who said he has raised more than $500,000 for Mr. Obama in the last few months. “I still firmly believe there is a tremendous amount of untapped resources that can be tapped if the Obama campaign pro-actively engages people in the Clinton world.”
Indeed, a New York Times analysis of Federal Election Committee records found that Clinton donors contributed roughly $2 million to the Obama campaign in July, a similar amount to what they gave in June.
The amount is not insubstantial, but it appears to fall short of targets originally envisioned by Obama fund-raisers.
When Mr. Obama decided in June to bypass the $84 million in public financing for the general election, campaign officials calculated that to make it worth the additional time Mr. Obama would need to devote off the campaign trail to fund-raising, they needed to raise two to three times the $84 million.
They set out a goal of raising $300 million for the campaign and $180 million for the Democratic Party, several fund-raisers said, or about $100 million a month.
The targets hewed closely with what Obama advisers also cited in interviews as their anticipated budget for the general election, but a spokesman for the campaign insisted on Tuesday that its fund-raising was on target and denied that $100 million a month was ever a real goal.
In July, Mr. Obama and the Democratic National Committee took in about $77 million. That swamped the $53 million Mr. McCain and the Republican National Committee collected. But it was for a second straight month significantly off the pace Obama officials had set.
In June, when Mrs. Clinton suspended her campaign, Clinton and Obama officials estimated they might be able to collect $50 million to $75 million or more from Clinton donors. They appear to be nowhere near that.
And the prospects for the Obama campaign to wring more out of top Clinton fund-raisers who remain inactive or unenthusiastic appears to be diminishing. There was much initial wrangling between the two sides over how to best draw in former Clinton fund-raisers, with some arguing the Obama campaign should alter its fund-raising structure to offer parallel titles for top Clinton bundlers to their Obama counterparts.
But Obama officials, who take pride in having less heirarchy in its organization, resisted. In the end, they saw little need to change what was working, several top Clinton fund-raisers said.
“I’ve always advocated, in order to bring people in, you need to bring people into your leadership hierarchy,” Mr. Nemazee said. “The Obama world does not work that way. As a consequence, that works fine for how they motivate people. It does not work well in terms of how you motivate the Clinton people.”
Another sore point remains Clinton fund-raisers’ contentions that Mr. Obama has not done enough to help Mrs. Clinton retire her debt. The analysis by The Times found that Obama donors gave $300,000 to Mrs. Clinton in July and $135,000 in June.
Perceived snubs leading up to the convention have not helped. Only a handful of Clinton donors got rooms at the coveted Ritz Carlton, where the biggest Obama fund-raisers are staying.
The Times’s analysis of campaign finance records found fewer than 50 out of the more than 300 “Hillraisers” — who have bundled more than $100,000 for Mrs. Clinton — contributed to the Obama campaign in July, up from about 10 the month before.
Just over 70 Hillraisers have contributed to Mr. Obama, meaning the vast majority of Hillraisers appear to have not.
“Coming into the convention, things aren’t as good as we all would have hoped for,” said Beth Dozoretz, a former finance chairwoman for the Democratic party and Hillraiser who said she is planning to do some women’s events for the Obama campaign in the fall but decided to take the summer off. “We remain hopeful that it will improve significantly after this week.”
This story, "Some Clinton Fund-Raisers Are Still Simmering," was first published in The New York Times.
