Obama to Announce Reelection Bid in Three Weeks
National Journal reports:
President Obama is fewer than three weeks away from formally announcing his reelection campaign, and will make it public with an online video his aides will post on his new campaign website, Democratic sources familiar with the plans said.
Obama’s team will try to keep the exact date and time a surprise, letting supporters know first by text message and e-mail. By that point, Obama would have opened his campaign account with the Federal Election Commission.
But a major Democratic National Committee fundraiser is set for April 14 in Chicago, and Democratic donors are being told that it will coincide with the announcement. Obama will attend the event.
The campaign-in-waiting, led by manager Jim Messina, will use the announcement as a mechanism to organize online, test responses, and perhaps even solicit donations.
Obama advisers envision the next year as a series of phases. The first is to get the operation up and running.
Senior campaign officials are hiring the teams that will poll, broadcast ads, and conduct research.
Many faces will be the same.
Joel Benenson, the Democratic pollster, will once again serve as Obama’s lead surveyor. But a Democrat familiar with the matter said that Cornell Belcher will play a larger role in that operation than he did in 2008.
Larry Grisolano, who led the paid media effort in 2008, will take the same role in 2012, albeit with an elevated title. It is not clear, however, whether Jim Margolis, who created many memorable Obama television advertisements and videos in 2008, will lead the broadcast part of the team. David Axelrod, of course, remains the senior message-setter.
The DNC will serve as the primary vehicle to bracket Republicans, but they will do so selectively, picking spots, rather than comprehensively.
The campaign will spend the summer and fall building capacity. Bundlers will secure pledges from donors and the DNC’s Organizing for America arm will transition to electoral mode. The White House will lead the messaging effort—Obama will be presidential—and there will be few press releases from the campaign, save for the announcement of fundraising totals and staff hires.
Two former White House aides, Sean Sweeney and Bill Burton, are expected to form an independent political group that is expected to morph into the vehicle for outside expenditures during the campaign. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s loosening of campaign-finance laws, Obama’s team has decided that it will not unilaterally deprive itself of a weapon that Republicans used to batter Democrats in the 2010 election. In 2008, the Obama campaign strongly discouraged the formation of any outside group, preferring to centralize messaging inside a tight circle of advisers in Chicago.
