With a little help from his famous friends, George Clooney made history by bringing in the biggest ever total for a single presidential fund-raiser.
Celebrities including Barbra Streisand, Tobey Maguire, Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr splashed out £25,000 each to dine with Barack Obama at the Oscar-winning star’s hillside Hollywood home last night, raising $15 million (£9.5 million).
About 150 donors helped the president launch his re-election campaign — with a few jokes at his host’s expense.
Mr Obama reminded the crowd that the famous Hope poster from his 2008 campaign came from a picture snapped of him and Clooney sitting together at a Washington event.
“This is the first time that George Clooney has been photo-shopped out of a picture. Never happened before, never happen again,” he said to a chorus of laughter. “We raised a lot of money because people love George”, Mr Obama added. “They like me; they love George and rightly so. He seems to occupy a constant state of grace.”
Apart from a few, brief serious interjections, the president kept his speech light.
“People have commented on the fact that I’ve got grey hair now. There was a blog post about ‘look how wrinkly Obama is getting’. It was sort of distressing. George doesn’t have to go through these things,” he said.
The president defended his historic embrace of same-sex marriage, saying: “It was a logical extension of what America is supposed to be. It grew directly out of this difference in visions: Are we a country that includes everybody and gives everybody a shot and treats everybody fairly?”
The fund-raising tally from the event, held under a transparent tent on the basketball court outside Clooney’s sprawling Tudor-style mansion, topped the previous record of almost £7 million raised by a Streisand concert and dinner in 2008.
It amounted to more in a single night than likely Republican nominee Mitt Romney has collected in any month since he jumped into the White House race.
Mr Obama raised another £2 million at two events in Seattle yesterday.
The president’s endorsement of gay marriage is said to have energised his Democrat base at a time when even some of his most ardent supporters were questioning why he stayed on the fence for so long.
The president stayed in Beverly Hills last night before flying on to Nevada to give a speech on mortgage reform.
