Roundup: Obama visits Los Angeles to raise fund

Senator Barack Obama visited the Los Angeles area on Tuesday to rally supports and raise fund for his presidential campaign.

Obama, a Democrat from Illinois, came to the city for the first time since announcing his presidential candidacy. Later Tuesday, he attended a celebrity-studded fund-raiser in Beverly Hills, near downtown Los Angeles.

"The fact is that there's something happening in the country," he told hundreds of cheering supporters at the Rancho Cienega Sports Complex in downtown Los Angeles. "There's a mood in the air. There's a sense that the way we've been doing business for the last couple of decades has to change -- that we are at a crossroads in this nation's history. We're at a crossroads internationally and we're at a crossroads domestically."

Obama also discussed his bill that would pull U.S. troops from Iraq by March 31, 2008, and promote energy independence. He assailed the Iraq war as a conflict "that should have never been authorized and should have never been waged."

"A war that after half a trillion dollars and over 3,000 of our bravest young men and women lost, we actually find ourselves less safe than we were before," he said.

In his Feb. 10 speech announcing his candidacy, Obama said, "Letting the Iraqis know that we will not be there forever is our last, best hope to pressure the Sunni and Shia to come to the table and find peace."

The New York Times reported that Obama campaign is expected to raise at least 1 million dollars in Los Angeles.

By comparison, candidates rarely raise more than 50,000 to 100,000 dollars at an event this early in the campaign, with former North Carolina Senator John Edwards raising about 100,000 dollars at a Los Angeles-area event last week, according to The New York Times.

Obama's visit comes in the midst of Southern California visits by several presidential contenders seeking to maximize their fund-raising ahead of the March 31 quarterly report deadline, a first test of the viability of their candidacies.

Democratic frontrunner Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, is scheduled to meet with Los Angeles-area supporters Thursday, a day after a scheduled visit by another Democratic hopeful, Senator Joseph Biden.

Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, who is seeking the Democratic nomination, and Republican former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani were also in the region last week.

The 2008 presidential campaign will be "the longest and most expensive election in American history," Federal Election Commissioner Michael Toner told the New York Daily News.

"We're heading into the first 1-billion-dollar election," Toner said.

To be competitive, a candidate will need to raise 100 million dollars by the end of the year, Toner said.

The 2008 campaign is the first since 1928 in which neither a sitting president nor vice president is seeking the presidency.

In a USA Today/Gallup Poll on the Democratic presidential field conducted on Feb. 9-11 among 495 Democrats and those leaning to the Democratic Party, Obama was second with 21 percent, trailing Clinton, who had 40 percent. The margin of error was 5 percentage points.

The poll also asked 936 registered voters who they would support in a general election. Giuliani finished ahead of Obama by a margin of 52 percent to 43 percent, while Obama and Senator John McCain, a Republican, each received 48 percent. The margin of error was 4 percentage points.

Source: Xinhua