1 year ago
California’s biggest politicos are set to fête President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris at a fundraiser coinciding with next week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference in San Francisco.
The reception, hosted by California Gov. Gavin Newsom, is expected to bring in north of $3 million for the president’s reelection and is being billed internally as a “super event,” according to two people familiar with the planning. They were granted anonymity to discuss internal planning.
Other hosts include Clint and Janet Reilly. Clint Reilly is a commercial real estate, hospitality and media executive who until the mid-1990s worked as a powerful political consultant and later mounted his own failed run for mayor of San Francisco.
Biden’s campaign declined to comment.
The fundraiser comes amid a spate of swing state polls that show Biden trailing Donald Trump in next year’s contest. Biden’s team has largely pushed back against calls in the party to sound the alarm, and the Bay Area gathering is designed as a show of force from a campaign that expects to raise a total $2 billion.
The event is a reunion of sorts for Harris and Newsom, longtime friends who have publicly supported each others’ careers at every turn, albeit with a hint of suspicion and even rivalry.
Biden has already held numerous California fundraisers since his reelection campaign launch, including a late September stop at the San Francisco home of 2020 rival Tom Steyer and Kat Steyer in tony Sea Cliff.
Newsom alone has helped the president raise more than $1 million in small-dollar donations online and at least $3 million at prior events, hosting a June reception for Biden in the deep-pocketed woodlands of Marin County.
Along with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, who joined Biden aides for a press event on Tuesday, Newsom has emerged as one of Biden and Harris’ top elected surrogates and fundraisers.
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