Obama campaign raises $86m with help from desi fundraisers

Obama recently released the names of the top fundraisers for his 2012 presidential campaign, a group that has shattered records by amassing $86 million in donations as of 30 June. Not surprisingly, this list of supporters reads like a Who’s Who in business, politics, and culture: Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has brought in more than $500,000 for Obama, as has Vogue editor Anna Wintour, and Dreamworks CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg. A few desis also appear on the A-list of Obama fundraisers. Because US federal campaign finance rules prevent individuals from donating more than $2,500 per election to a candidate, politicians rely on “bundlers,” or high-powered supporters like Benioff, Katzenberg, and Wintour to convince friends and business associates to write generous donation checks. Some 40 percent of Obama’s current $86 million campaign war chest comes from 244 bundlers. [caption id=“attachment_43641” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Indian-Americans are among the leading fundraisers for the ‘Obama 2012’ campaign. Reuters”]  [/caption] Azita Raji is the highest roller among the Indian-American bundlers, having brought in more than $500,000 for the Obama campaign. Though she has nearly no record of donating to political causes before writing checks to the Obama campaign in ’08, she has since then become one of the few to donate the maximum $30,000 to the Democratic National Committee in 2010. Clearly, she’s earned her membership to both the National Advisory Board of the Democratic National Committee, and the Obama National Finance Committee. (She was also on the guest list for the January statehouse dinner honouring Chinese President Hu Jintao, a fete attended by the country’s most influential Asian-Americans.) A retired vice-president of JP Morgan where she focussed on fixed-income investments, Raji is a trustee of Barnard College, where she graduated in 1983 with degrees in architecture and French. Raji also earned a degree in finance from Columbia Business School, and although she has lived and worked in Asia and Europe, she currently lives in Belvedere, one of the wealthiest communities in Northern California. Active in local community organisations and boards, she has donated to the Marin ballet and her local swim league. She is married to Gary Syman, the retired managing director of Goldman Sachs in San Francisco. Other top desi bundlers include Deven Parekh of New York, who corralled between $200,000 to $500,000 into Obama’s campaign coffers. Parekh is managing director at Insight Venture Partners, a private equity and venture capital firm that deals exclusively in software and Internet-based businesses. A Henry Crown Fellow of The Aspen Institute, which promotes philanthropy and values-based leadership, Parekh also sits on the board of Publicolor, a nonprofit that works with “disaffected teenage students.” Kavita Tahnka, an attorney from Los Altos Hills, California, also pitched in by bringing in between $50,000 to $10,000 in donations. The Obama campaign is the only one so far to voluntarily disclose information about its top fundraisers, though it has only provided names of the donors and the cities in which they live. The campaign also declined to provide details on the specific amounts each bundler raised, offering a wide range in dollar amounts instead. The president has so far outpaced his Republican rivals in attracting donations. Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, is at the top of the GOP heap with $12.7 million. See the entire list of Obama’s major bundlers on the Sunlight Foundation website. Do you spot any other desis on the list?