Archives for September 2012

The day before her latest personal appearance in The View, Michelle Obama was in the vicinity for a $10,000/plate fundraiser that blocked traffic on Herrontown Road for most of the day. Surprisingly, the local papers did not report on the visit, except for a brief preview, PRINCETON: Some local Dems to skip the first lady. They probably “skipped” because of “other plans” that most likely do not involve coughing up ten grand.

However, NJ.com does have a report (more on that in a moment).

The home hosting the fundraiser had a huge tent in their side yard, but the hosts are the soul of discretion,

Representatives from the Obama national campaign office in Chicago and the New Jersey office did not respond to requests for comment to discuss the fundraiser, due to be held at the home of Andrew and Carol Golden.

Mr. Golden runs the company that manages the $17 billion endowment fund of Princeton University, while Ms. Golden works for Corner House, the local substance abuse program. She also is the chairwoman of the board of trustees of the Mercer County chapter of Planned Parenthood.

The couple are donors to Democrat politicians and causes, with Ms. Golden having given $11,000 to Texans for Truth, a group that challenged former President George W. Bush’s service in the Texas National Guard, election records showed. She declined to comment last month about the fundraiser.

I couldn’t find any photos of the event on the White House website.

However, the most interesting part of the event may be this:

First Lady Michelle Obama has made a campaign stop in New Jersey, urging her husband’s supporters to volunteer in the closing weeks of the presidential campaign – especially in swing states such as neighboring Pennsylvania.

As you may recall, in 2008 Obama took Pennsylvania by 10.1 percentage points over McCain. The Obama campaign is clearly not expecting that to repeat itself since Michelle was telling people on Sunday

“We need you to head over to Pennsylvania,” she told 230 people gathered in a white tent. “Get in the car, drive on over to Pennsylvania for a few days or a weekend to help get out the vote in that state.”

Also interesting,

Neither party has done much public campaigning in New Jersey, which is likely to go to the Democrats on Nov. 6. But campaigns have raised more than $5 million each in the moneyed state, with the president ahead by about $200,000.

That Obama has out-raised Mitt by less than 5% in New Jersey is astonishing. The bluest parts of the Garden State tend to be, like Princeton, the most affluent (with some exceptions). Maybe it has something to do with this.

Over in Ohio, another of Pennsylvania’s neighbors, today Mike Rowe meets Mitt to talk about how to get America back to work. Bryan Preston has the schedule.

Makes you wonder the residents of which state – Illinois? Michigan? – is the Obama campaign asking to head to Ohio to help get out the vote.

Stacy McCain’s been reporting from Ohio. Follow his links for his reports.

UPDATE,
Via Bryan’s commenter Allston, here’s the letter Mike Rowe wrote to Mitt,

Which brings me to my purpose in writing. On Labor Day of 2008, the fans of Dirty Jobs helped me launch this website. mikeroweWORKS.com began as a Trade Resource Center designed to connect kids with careers in the skilled trades. It has since evolved into a non-profit foundation – a kind of PR Campaign for hard work and skilled labor.
Thanks to a number of strategic partnerships, I have been able to promote a dialogue around these issues with a bit more credibility than my previous resume allowed. I’ve spoken to Congress (twice) about the need to confront the underlying stigmas and stereotypes that surround these kinds of jobs. Alabama and Georgia have both used mikeroweWORKS to launch their own statewide technical recruitment campaigns, and I’m proud to be the spokesman for both initiatives. I also work closely with Caterpillar, Ford, Kimberly-Clark, and Master Lock, as well as The Boy Scouts of America and The Future Farmers of America. To date, the mikeroweWORKS Foundation has raised over a million dollars for trade scholarships. It’s modest by many standards, but I think we’re making a difference.
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Certainly, we need more jobs, and you were clear about that in Tampa. But the Skills Gap proves that we need something else too. We need people who see opportunity where opportunity exists. We need enthusiasm for careers that have been overlooked and underappreciated by society at large. We need to have a really big national conversation about what we value in the workforce, and if I can be of help to you in that regard, I am at your service – assuming of course, you find yourself in a new address early next year.