Obama inauguration very much a Hollywood production

SF Chronicle | Jan 15, 2009

By Carla Marinucci

(01-15) 14:10 PST — Californians dramatically lead the pack among big donors underwriting President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration, with a roster of Golden State movie stars, film executives and businesses – including Google – putting up $6.4 million so far toward the next week’s events, a new report shows.

The Center for Responsive Politics in Washington today released an analysis that showed that Californian’s donations far surpass checks from the next most-generous state of New York, whose residents have given $3.9 million to the events, which are expected to cost upward of $42 million.

Among the California residents who gave the $50,000 limit imposed by the Obama campaign: directors Steven Spielberg and George Lucas, producers Jeffrey Katzenberg and Robert Zemeckis, actors Halle Berry, Sharon Stone and Jaime Foxx, and record producer Berry Gordy. San Franciscans include Levi Strauss executive Robert Haas, Steven Swig and theater impresario Carol Shorenstein Hays.

Google ranked as one of the top 10 donors – with seven individuals in the firm donating $175,000 to the event, the study showed.

“This is not the same kind of group that funded the Obama campaign,” which appealed to millions of people for small donations to pay the bills for its presidential campaign, said Massie Ritsch, spokesman for the Center for Responsive Politics, which has posted data regarding inaugural donations online at OpenSecrets.org.

While donors have historically underwritten the event marking the start of a new administration, there have been some changes instituted by the Obama transition team in reporting and limiting the donations, the report said.

While disclosure rules don’t require making information public on donors until a few months after the event, the Obama team has “opted to disclose beforehand – and that’s positive,” said Ritsch. “We hope they’ll continue to use technology to make government more transparent.”

And traditionally, there have been no limit on donors to inaugural events, but Obama capped those donations at $50,000, which the center notes “is still more than 10 times what individuals could give to his campaign.”

Finally, the Obama team has made another change in barring contributions from corporations, labor unions, political action committees and registered lobbyists – though individuals from major corporations, such as Google, are free to make the maximum donations.

Ritsch says that the role of donors in the event will be important in more ways than one.

With an estimated 2 million or more people expected to be in the nation’s capital on Tuesday, “there’s no way to make this an inexpensive event,” said Ritsch. “The cost of the setting up to accommodate a few million people is large – and sure, you can scale down … but there is still a fixed cost that has to come from somewhere. And tax dollars can only go so far.”

Donors list

Some of the Californians who have made $50,000 contributions to President-elect Barack Obama’s upcoming inauguration:

– Halle Berry, actor, Los Angeles

– Jamie Foxx, actor, Los Angeles

– Berry Gordy, record producer, Los Angeles

– Sharon Stone, actor, Los Angeles

– Robert Haas, Levi Strauss, San Francisco

– Michael Kieschnick, Working Assets Long Distance, Palo Alto

– Jason Kinney, California Strategies group, Sacramento

– George Lucas, producer and director, San Rafael

– Jamie McCourt, Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles

– Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians, Palm Springs

– Kate and Steven Spielberg, Dreamworks SKG, Los Angeles

– Steven Swig, Presidio School of Management, San Francisco

– John Thompson, Symantec Corp., Woodside

– Carol Winograd, Stanford University, Palo Alto

– Robert Zemeckis, Walt Disney Co., Burbank