Embassies for lease
Well-Trod Path: Political Donor to Ambassador
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE and SHERYL GAY STOLBERG, NYT
When President Obama hosted dozens of his top donors at the White House in late November for a celebratory post-election dinner of chicken and pumpkin pie, few in the room could claim to have done more to elect him than Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue magazine.
And after raising millions of dollars for Mr. Obama, Ms. Wintour had a prize in mind, according to several people close to the White House: appointment as ambassador to Britain, the United States’ most prestigious diplomatic post.
But by the time Ms. Wintour returned home to New York, officials had told her the job in London would almost certainly go to someone who had done even more for Mr. Obama: Matthew Barzun, a genial former technology executive who spent 20 grueling months as finance chairman of the president’s national fund-raising operation.
As Mr. Obama begins his second term in the White House, the donors and bundlers who raised more than a billion dollars to get him there are pressing hard for appointments. The sheer scale of Mr. Obama’s fund-raising machine has led to an especially intense scramble for plum ambassadorships, with as many as 300 people vying for just 30 or so positions, according to several people involved in the process.
(More here.)
When President Obama hosted dozens of his top donors at the White House in late November for a celebratory post-election dinner of chicken and pumpkin pie, few in the room could claim to have done more to elect him than Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue magazine.
And after raising millions of dollars for Mr. Obama, Ms. Wintour had a prize in mind, according to several people close to the White House: appointment as ambassador to Britain, the United States’ most prestigious diplomatic post.
But by the time Ms. Wintour returned home to New York, officials had told her the job in London would almost certainly go to someone who had done even more for Mr. Obama: Matthew Barzun, a genial former technology executive who spent 20 grueling months as finance chairman of the president’s national fund-raising operation.
As Mr. Obama begins his second term in the White House, the donors and bundlers who raised more than a billion dollars to get him there are pressing hard for appointments. The sheer scale of Mr. Obama’s fund-raising machine has led to an especially intense scramble for plum ambassadorships, with as many as 300 people vying for just 30 or so positions, according to several people involved in the process.
(More here.)
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1 Comments:
Goodness. If it were not for the NYT, I would have thought that this Intermingling' of money and politics only went on with Republicans. I suppose that it is all OK this time around.
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