The group of
private-sector business leaders advising President Obama on how to create jobs and grow the economy is full of deep-pocket Democratic donors and high-profile financiers of Obama’s re-election campaign, a review of Federal Election Commission data shows.At least 10 members of the Obama-appointed
Council on Jobs and Competitiveness gave the legal maximum contribution — $4,600 — to help get Obama elected in 2008, and they continue to write checks for the president in 2012. Several also serve as Obama campaign bundlers, top fundraisers who collect millions of dollars from their networks of well-to-do colleagues and friends to aid his re-election bid.
The bundlers — Mark Gallogy, co-founder of investment firm Centerbridge Partners, Penny Prtizker, president and CEO of Pritzker Realty Group, and Robert Wolf, chairman of UBS Americas — have raised as much as $2.7 million for Obama in 2008 and 2012 combined, according to estimates provided by the Obama campaign.
Pritzker served as the Obama presidential campaign’s national finance chairwoman in 2008 and co-chair of the Obama inaugural committee in 2009. Wolf is an occasional Obama golf partner and most recently
played golf with the president during his vacation on Martha’s Vineyard.
Other members of the council who have personally padded Obama’s election coffers include Xerox Corporation CEO Ursula Burns, TIAA-CREF CEO Roger Ferguson, MIT/Harvard Broad Institute director Eric Lander, Citigroup chairman Richard Parsons, Hooven-Dayton Corp. CEO Christopher Che, UC Berkeley professor Laura D’Andrea Tyson, attorney and Amazon.com/Google board member John Doerr, and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg.
