Obama Targets LA's Black Elite

 

Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Just after new reports that Romney and the Republican Party outraised President Obama and the Democrats in the month of May, Obama did some work to make up the difference, attended a fundraising breakfast in View Park, Calif., where 300 paid $2,500 and up for the honor. The target audience, the Washington Post reports, was the area’s black political, civic and business elite. Outside the mansion, a crowd of hundreds reportedly cheered and chanted, with hand-made signs displaying adoring slogans such as ”Obama for Life” and "You Rock Mr. President."

Inside the Quarles home, Obama stuck to his typical stump speech, taking a few swipes at opponent Mitt Romney and explaining that there is a role for government in helping give not a “hand out” but a “hand up.” Republicans, in contrast, are purveying “a vision that basically believes that the answer to every question are more tax cuts for the wealthiest, the most powerful… and that somehow if government isn’t doing anything, then the country’s automatically going to do better,” Obama said, taking his jacket off under the hot sun and urging his supporters to do the same. “It would be one thing if we hadn’t tried this. But we tried this whole recipe, and it didn’t work.”
The Quarles event was the fifth fundraiser of a two-day swing through San Francisco and Los Angeles, the highlight of which was a 600-person gala for the LGBT Leadership Council at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel Wednesday evening.
There, Obama offered his first public embrace to gay supporters since declaring his support for same-sex marriage in a widely promoted television interview last month