http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/us/po ... ising.htmlWhere Has Hillary Clinton Been? Ask the UltrarichAmy Chozick and Jonathan Martin
Robby Mook, the Clinton campaign manager, said 2.3 million people had contributed to the campaign, which has significantly increased the number of donors who give online in small increments.
The public has gotten used to seeing Mrs. Clinton’s carefully choreographed appearances and her somewhat halting speeches and TV interviews over the course of the long — and sometimes seemingly joyless — campaign, but donors this summer have glimpsed an entirely different person.
It is clear from interviews with more than a dozen attendees of Mrs. Clinton’s finance events this summer and a handful of pictures and videos of her at the closed-press gatherings that Mrs. Clinton, often described as warm and personable in small settings, whoever the audience, can be especially relaxed, candid and even joyous in this company.
Look WHO DID come over for lunch... Wow. #ImWithHer pic.twitter.com/1pX4V4mUxq
— Justin Timberlake (@jtimberlake) Aug. 23, 2016
Mrs. Clinton’s aides have gone to great lengths to project an image of her as down-to-earth and attuned to the challenges of what she likes to call “the struggling and the striving.” She began her campaign last year riding in a van to Iowa from New York and spent much of last summer hosting round-table discussions with a handful of what her campaign called “everyday Americans” in Iowa and New Hampshire.
Yet some of the closest relationships Mrs. Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, have are with their longstanding contributors. If she feels most at ease around millionaires, within the gilded bubble, it is in part because they are some of her most intimate friends.
“It’s like going to a wedding or a bar mitzvah — you catch up,” explained Mitchell Berger, a Democratic donor in Florida, about the familial nature of the events. Mr. Berger would know: He has been raising money for the Clintons since he held a fund-raiser in his Fort Lauderdale office for Mr. Clinton the day after he announced his candidacy in 1991.
Mr. Berger, who joined Mrs. Clinton last month at a donor event in Miami Beach, said many of the individual conversations before and after she speaks at the gatherings are centered more on grandchildren than weighty policy matters.
But when she has had a give-and-take this summer about issues, Mrs. Clinton, who has promised to “reshuffle the deck” in favor of the middle class and portrayed Mr. Trump as an out-of-touch billionaire, has almost exclusively been fielding the concerns of the wealthiest Americans.
Mrs. Clinton with Jimmy Buffett, Jon Bon Jovi and Paul McCartney on Tuesday at a fund-raiser in the Hamptons.
To businessmen who complain to Mrs. Clinton that President Obama has been unfriendly to their interests, she says she would approach business leaders more like Mr. Clinton did during his administration.
When financiers complain about the regulations implemented by the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul, Mrs. Clinton reaffirms her support for strong Wall Street regulation, but adds that she is open to listening to anyone’s ideas and at times notes that she represented the banking industry as a senator.
The wealthy contributors who host Mrs. Clinton often complain about her opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and express concerns that Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont pushed her to the left on trade and other issues. Mrs. Clinton reminds them she has both opposed and supported trade deals in the past.
And, as she noted at an event last month on Cape Cod in Massachusetts, Mrs. Clinton points out that she worked cooperatively with Republicans when she served in the Senate and would do so as president.
OPEN Graphic
Graphic: Donors for Bush, Kasich and Christie Are Turning to Clinton More Than to Trump
“I’d say the major themes are small business, regulation and getting people back to work,” said Alan Patricof, a financier and longtime donor to Mrs. Clinton.
The campaign’s finance team is led by Dennis Cheng, previously the chief fund-raiser for the Clinton Foundation, and it employs a couple dozen staff members. Mr. Cheng, who attends the events with Mrs. Clinton, offers donors a number of contribution options that provide them and their families varying levels of access to Mrs. Clinton. John Morgan, a Florida lawyer and donor, described Mr. Cheng as “the master concierge.”
For a donation of $2,700, the children (under 16) of donors at an event last month at the Sag Harbor, N.Y., estate of the hedge fund magnate Adam Sender could ask Mrs. Clinton a question. A family photo with Mrs. Clinton cost $10,000, according to attendees.
Another advantage to choosing private fund-raisers over town halls or other public events is that Mrs. Clinton can bask in an affectionate embrace as hosts try to limit confrontational engagements.
Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a backer of Democrats and a friend of the Clintons’, made sure attendees did not grill Mrs. Clinton at the $100,000-per-couple lamb dinner Mrs. Forester de Rothschild hosted under a tent on the lawn of her oceanfront Martha’s Vineyard mansion.
“I said, ‘Let’s make it a nice night for her and show her our love,’” Mrs. Forester de Rothschild said.
Cash-seeking candidates from both parties often rely on August to reach vacationing donors who open their wallets, and their palatial homes. In 2012, the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, brought in close to $4 million over a single weekend from events in the Hamptons. And Mr. Trump, while netting $64 million through online and direct-mail fund-raising in July, also made the trek this summer to the eastern end of Long Island to raise cash.
But Mr. and Mrs. Clinton have occupied a particular place in the social fabric of the enclave. Over the past several summers, they have spent the last two weeks of August in a rented 12,000-square-foot home with a heated pool in East Hampton and in a six-bedroom mansion with a private path to the beach in Sagaponack. This year, the former first couple stayed in the guesthouse of Steven Spielberg’s East Hampton compound built on nine acres overlooking Georgica and Lily Ponds.
Mr. Trump’s candidacy has allowed Mrs. Clinton to reach out to a new set of donors in the area who typically give to Republicans but dislike the current nominee. (Mr. Trump feels more at home at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., than in the Hamptons, where the exclusive Maidstone Club once denied him a full-time membership, according to The New York Post.)
“The Hamptons is full of powerful, wealthy people who are bored and go to constant social events to see who else got invited and to show your status,” said Ken Sunshine, a veteran Democratic activist and public relations executive with a home in Remsenburg, N.Y.
“This year,” he added, “going to a Clinton event is at the very top of the list.”