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Your support makes all the difference.Last week: film. This week: fashion. Doubling down on a strategy which incites critics as much as it seems to excite supporters, Barack Obama will devote part of yet another busy week to soliciting endorsements and campaign dollars from Americas A-list.
The President will attend a series of high-profile fundraisers with key figures from the fashion industry, led by Anna Wintour, the British-born editor of Vogue magazine, who yesterday was tipped as a possible future candidate for US Ambassador to London.
Speculative reports suggest that Wintour, 62, is a candidate to succeed Louis Susman, America's representative in the UK, who is set to retire later this year. The formidable editor, who inspired The Devil Wears Prada, has been named a "top bundler" for Obama, having raised more than half a million dollars for his "Victory Fund."
In Chicago tomorrow, Ms Wintour and supermodel Iman, who is married to David Bowie, will walk the red carpet at a fundraiser at Oprah Winfrey's TV studio in Chicago. On Thursday, Ms Wintour will join other key players at the New York home of Sarah Jessica Parker, the Sex and the City star, for a $40,000 (£25,850) a head dinner party attended by Obama and his wife Michelle. The Obama campaign's move to boost support in the fashion world comes days after he visited Hollywood for a fundraiser attended by key players in the movie business. He hosted a low-profile breakfast for 25 young Hollywood stars, including Jeremy Renner, Jessica Alba, and Zachary Quinto.
Democratic strategists hope that the President can use celebrities to once more spark the enthusiasm of younger voters, who turned-out in such huge numbers to support him in 2008, and must be persuaded to return to the ballot box this November if he is to succeed in securing a second term.
To that end, Obama's first national campaign video aired last week, during the MTV Movie Awards. It featured Sarah Jessica Parker calling Obama "the guy who ended the war in Iraq; the guy who says you should be able to marry anyone you want; the guy who created 4 million new jobs... That guy!" The video sparked criticism from Republicans, who have long used Obama's chummy relationship with the red carpet crowd to suggest that he is behaving inappropriately at a time of hardship for many voters.
Republicans say a raffle by the Obama campaign to win tickets to Parker's dinner party is "frivolous". But GOP supporters are being asked to buy tickets to win a dinner with Mitt Romney and celebrity backer Donald Trump.
Celeb endorsements: who's backing whom
Film
Obama: Spielberg, Clooney, Hanks... take your pick.
Romney: Jon Voight, Chuck Norris, and, er, Kelsey Grammer.
Music
Obama: Springsteen, Madonna, Will.i.am, 50 Cent, etc.
Romney: Ted Nugent, Kid Rock, Gene Simmons.
Fashion
Obama: Marc Jacobs, Zac Posen, Diane von Fürstenberg, and many more.
Romney: Cindy Crawford (a former Obama supporter) and designer Joseph Abboud.
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