President Barack Obama is scheduled to arrive in the Southland this afternoon for a planned 18-hour visit that will include the taping of an appearance on ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live” and a Democratic National Committee fundraiser in Santa Monica.
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The visit will be Obama’s 21st to Los Angeles or Orange counties since taking office in 2009. He has held fundraisers on all but three of the visits.
What the White House described as a Democratic National Committee roundtable will be closed to reporters, unlike many of his other fundraisers, where one reporter was allowed to attend, then share his or her notes with the rest of the news media.
The Los Angeles Times reported that the fundraiser will be held at the home of ICM Partners co-founder Chris Silbermann and his wife, Julia Franz. Tickets are priced at $33,400 per couple, The Times reported. The figure is the maximum amount an individual can contribute to a national party committee in a year.
“President Obama’s upcoming trip to Los Angeles is another example of why he cares more about the Golden State as an ATM machine than a constituency,” Ninio Fetalvo, a deputy press secretary with the Republican National Committee, told City News Service. “The president should focus on addressing our nation’s most pressing issues.”
The fundraiser will be Obama’s 32nd in Los Angeles County as president. Through the seventh years of their administrations, Bill Clinton conducted 42, George W. Bush nine and Ronald Reagan eight, according to research by Brendan J. Doherty, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy, for his book “The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign.” George H.W. Bush conducted 10 and Jimmy Carter six during their single terms, according to Doherty.
Obama will be making his first appearance on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” as president, and the show will be aired tonight. He appeared on the program via satellite in June 2008 when he was a senator.
Obama made four appearances on “The Tonight Show” when Jay Leno was host and the NBC late-night talk show was taped in Burbank.
The visit will be Obama’s second to Southern California in two months. He visited friends and played golf in the Coachella Valley Feb. 14-16.
Obama last visited the Los Angeles area in October, attending a pair of fundraisers and announcing the creation of a national monument in the San Gabriel Mountains.
Obama is scheduled to depart from Los Angeles International Airport Friday morning, bound for Phoenix, where he is set to speak at the Phoenix Veterans Affairs Medical Center, the focal point of a nationwide scandal over delayed care for veterans, falsified wait time data and other management failures in the Department of Veterans Affairs.
