Barack Obama Leaves Trail for Hollywood Fundraiser

Sept. 16, 2008 — -- Democrat Barack Obama goes from wooing voters in a Denver suburb in the swing state of Colorado today to rubbing shoulders with Hollywood A-listers tonight at a big-money Beverly Hills fundraiser featuring mega-star Barbra Streisand.

Dreamworks' Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen are co-hosting tonight's party -- a reception and dinner costing $28,500 a person at Los Angeles' Beverly Wilshire Hotel, followed by a later event featuring Streisand at $2,500 a ticket.

Sen. John McCain blasted Obama Tuesday for the Hollywood fundraiser.

"He says he's siding with the people just before he flew off for a fundraiser in Hollywood with Barbra Streisand," McCain said in Vienna, Ohio.

"Let me tell you my friends, there's no place I'd rather be than right here with the working men and women of Ohio."

The Beverly Hills soiree is the latest fundraiser Obama must attend between now and Election Day -- many of them taking him off the trail to states like California and New York, where he is likely to win in November.

Obama recently attended a Sept. 5 fundraiser at the home of musician Jon Bon Jovi in New Jersey.

As he competes for votes in the next 49 days, the Illinois senator must simultaneously try to replenish his war chest to compete financially with his Republican rival, McCain, who decided to accept $84 million in public financing.

Obama made the unprecedented decision to abandon his earlier pledge to accept public funds and must now work overtime to keep the money flowing in.

"This is the first time any major presidential candidate in the modern era has rejected public financing in the general election," said political science professor Costas Panagopoulos, director of the elections and campaign management department at Fordham University.

Panagopoulos said, while there may be advantages for Obama's decision to raise campaign money himself, the disadvantages are clearer.

"One advantage may be that Sen. Obama raises substantially more money than he would have if he accepted public financing, but the fact remains that he will have to devote considerable time to fundraising in the general election and that [his] opponent will not," Panagopoulos said.