Two dozen of the Democratic Party’s leading donors will gather for breakfast with allies of Hillary Clinton in New York on Thursday to discuss raising money for a pro-Clinton “super PAC,†according to people with knowledge of the event.
The meeting is being hosted by Michael Kempner, a New Jersey public relations executive and one of President Obama’s top national fund-raisers in the 2012 campaign, and will feature Harold Ickes, a longtime Clinton confidant who has begun advising the group, Ready for Hillary. Rafi Jafri, who was Mrs. Clinton’s Illinois fund-raising director during her 2008 bid for president, is also helping to organize the breakfast, according to an invitation obtained by The New York Times.
The event underscores how rapidly members of Mrs. Clinton’s inner circle are moving to harness and shape the political energy already building around a potential presidential campaign by Mrs. Clinton, less than six months after Mr. Obama was sworn in for his second term. Mrs. Cinton’s grass-roots supporters and some senior Democrats are already publicly declaring their allegiance to Mrs. Clinton, an undeclared candidate who may be years away from formally entering the 2016 race, if she does at all.
With Mrs. Clinton busy setting up shop at her family’s foundation and seemingly determined to steer clear of partisan politics for the time being, pieces of her political network are coalescing around groups like Ready for Hillary, formed in January by two former campaign volunteers. At first viewed warily by the Clinton world, in recent months the upstart group has been endorsed or informally advised by a sle! w of Clinton loyalists, including James Carville and Craig Smith, both former political advisers to President Bill Clinton.
Other groups are also springing up around the country, as political operatives and donors maneuver for position and pre-eminence in a campaign that does not yet even exist â€" but which many of them hope will spring into being after the 2014 midterm elections. Other groups are focused on aiding Terry McAuliffe, a Clinton ally who is running for governor of Virginia this year but has played a central role in every major campaign or fund-raising effort of the Clintons since the mid-1990s.
Invited to Thursday’s breakfast are a mix of Clinton and Obama fund-raisers as well as some Republican donors who have expressed interest in a Clinton bid, according to one person involved with the event.
