Obama hits the road to raise cash for Democrats

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama heads to California on Monday to raise cash for Senator Barbara Boxer, whose tight race for re-election is emblematic of the tough fight Democrats will face in November elections.

The fund-raising trip is seen as part of a stepped-up effort by Obama to swell the Democratic Party's war chest ahead of congressional elections, in which a newly energized Republican Party hopes to loosen the Democrats' grip on the Senate and House of Representatives.

As the election season intensifies, Obama will have to balance a full domestic and foreign agenda with his role as fundraiser-in-chief to help shore up vulnerable Democrats who fear being punished by voters skeptical about his healthcare overhaul and concerned about continued high unemployment.

In California, where he will overnight and return to Washington on Tuesday evening, he will attend several fund-raisers in Los Angeles for Boxer, an ally and chairman of the Senate's environmental committee.

The three-term senator faces several wealthy Republican challengers, including former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina and former Congressman Tom Campbell.

Political analyst Jennifer Duffy of the non-partisan Cook Political Report said Boxer is "not in solid shape" and is facing the same sort of anti-incumbent fervor as candidates in other parts of the country are encountering.

"Voters in California are certainly as angry as voters anywhere in the country, given the state of things in the state government and the (budget) deficit they face," she said.

OBAMA TARGETS BIG SPENDERS

All 435 seats in the House and one-third of the 100-seat Senate are up for election in November, with Democrats holding a wide majority in each chamber.

Republicans hope to make gains in both the House and Senate in part by capitalizing on anti-incumbent voter sentiment in competitive congressional districts represented by Democratic lawmakers.

Analysts say Democrats could also be the main targets of a potential surge in special-interest money sparked by a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that allows companies and unions to finance campaigns that favor or oppose specific candidates.

Obama, who built up a formidable fund-raising machine around small online donations during his 2008 presidential campaign, is focusing on big donors at the fund-raisers.

"As he travels the country he will also spend some time helping candidates for Congress who have been helpful to him passing his agenda," Deputy White House spokesman Josh Earnest said.

But Obama's decision to do more fund-raisers was driven more by the election calendar than the recent boost he got from passage of healthcare legislation or the signing of the START nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia, Earnest said.

Last week in Florida he attended two events, including a cocktail reception at the Miami Beach home of singer Gloria Estefan, that was expected to raise $2.5 million for the Democratic National Committee.

The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks money in U.S. politics, says its conservative estimate is that the November election may cost more than $3.7 billion.

It says Democrats received about 57 percent of all campaign donations in the current election cycle as of December 31. By contrast, Republicans claimed about 62 percent of campaign donations just before they lost control of Congress in 2006.

A Gallup Daily tracking poll for the week ending April 11 put Republicans slightly ahead of Democrats, 48 percent to 44 percent, in the congressional voting preferences of registered voters nationally.

Gallup said at this early stage Republicans appeared to be showing much greater enthusiasm than Democrats about voting in the November election.

(Additional reporting by David Morgan and Steve Holland; editing by Jackie Frank)