Young Obama Fund-Raiser Helps Brooklyn Congressional Candidate
A member of Barack Obama’s finance committee, Arthur Leopold, will be raising money for congressional candidate Kevin Powell as Powell makes a bid to unseat Representative Ed Towns of Brooklyn.
It's worth noting that Powell is an Obama supporter, whereas Towns, like every other Democratic member of the New York congressional delegation, supported Clinton. Powell aborted a 2006 primary bid for the seat Towns ultimately won in a three-way race, earning 47 percent of the vote.
When asked about the campaign, Leopold (who just turned 20 last week) emailed me to say:
"We plan to raise as much money for Kevin Powell as he needs to win. How much we succeed in raising will be a matter of public record, as will all of his campaign expenses. The Obama donors are in the public domain, and we expect to find significant support there; however, Kevin Powell has his own independent base of support, and we will be working the district to raise as much money as we can locally. The district is hungry for change, and Kevin is aligned with the views of his community. The district also overwhelmingly supported Barack Obama in the February 5th primary and with Ed Town's having won with 47% of the vote in his 2006 primary, we believe that Kevin will be able to win the primary in September. Kevin has been receiving and will continue to receive enormous amounts of support from the New York Barack Obama base as he was an early supporter."
- Poll
- Obama (D)
- McCain(R)
- Spread
- RCP Average
- 46.5
- 41.7
- Obama +4.8
- Candidate
- Favorable
- Unfavorable
- Spread
- Obama
- 55.7
- 32.7
- +23.0
- McCain
- 52.4
- 34.7
- +17.7
I met Kevin last year and was very impressed by his knowledge of the district and issues that are core to the constituents he hopes to represent. Towns has done nothing for the district and will likely lose if Powell can raise enough funds. It's good to see that the Obama operation will be supporting him.
The names of the Obama contributors are in the public domain but federal law prohibits other campaigns from using this data to raise funds. Leopold may be breaking the law if he's not careful.
Yoda,
If Leopold and/or Powell ask their personal connections which they've cultivated through their respective work for Senator Obama to contribute to Powell's campaign, there's absolutely NOTHING 'illegal' about that!
fyi - it's only illegal if the donors' information (address occupation, etc) is taken off the public domain. there is nothing illegal about taking names. gotta love the loops in mccain feingold.