Obama will headline fund-raising events in Boston and New York on Wednesday involving his elite donor networks. He starts Thursday in New York, flies to Charleston, S.C. for a rally and then returns to Chicago for a “Welcome Home” $1,000-per-person reception at the home of Desiree Rogers on Chicago’s Gold Coast. The hosts include Obama Finance Chair Penny Pritzker and his top Illinois fund-raisers and bundlers.The Obama presidential campaign also refuses to disclose the names of his National Finance Committee or the Illinois Finance Committee. Obama does disclose the names of his top bundlers, many of whom probably are on the finance committee.
Obama has long resisted putting on what he calls his “public” schedule information about all the fund-raising events where he appears. President Bush does disclose fund-raisers he attends.
Obama’s presidential campaign has been eager to get out information about low-end donations-the army of small dollar donors who have given through the internet. Sometimes bigger receptions are disclosed; sometimes not. On Monday, an Obama presidential spokesman declined to provide any explanation of the fund-raising events Obama will be doing in Boston and New York on the grounds they will not be listed on his “public schedule.”
$1,000 a person. That’s a lot of change.
of the Chicago Multi-Billionaire Pritzker family…
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p>Penny Pritzker is one of the most active of celebrated Chicago patriarch Abraham N. Pritzker’s 12 living grandchildren. A Harvard-trained attorney, Pritzker, 46, was chosen by her late uncle Jay to help oversee the family’s vast portfolio of investments, including the Hyatt hotel chain and the Marmon Group industrial conglomerate. The $16.4 billion fortune has since been slated for a carve-up and will eventually include IPOs or outright sales of various Pritzker companies and assets. Former chairman, now defunct Superior Bank. For now, Penny focuses on real estate investments, developing senior living facilities under the Hyatt Classic Residence name and office properties through a venture with Chicago-based Higgins Development Partners. The 49-story Hyatt Center skyscraper in Chicago’s Loop, which she pushed in 2002, opened on July 19, 2005.
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p>Penny Pritzker is an American billionaire (net worth $2.8 billion USD), the granddaughter of Abram Nicholas Pritzker and the niece of Jay Pritzker.
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p>She attended Castilleja School until 1977. In 1981 she received a BA in Economics from Harvard University later earning a JD and MBA from Stanford University. Penny lives in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago with her two teenage children and her husband, Dr. Bryan Traubert.
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p>She is ranked 135th on the 2007 Forbes list of richest Americans. She has sat on Harvard’s Board of Overseers since 2002, and is active in numerous philanthropic and civic endeavors, including Chicago’s Millennium Park. She has also developed a Chicago skyscraper, been president of commercial and residential real estate firms, and served as chairman for a major credit-reporting company. In addition to hotels, pritzker fortunes and investments include the Victoria Elgin Casino, tobacco interests and off-shore developments. Currently, she is the national finance chairwoman of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.