Illustration by Zina Saunders.

Barack Obama won a second term as president. But the biggest political player of the election cycle, it’s fair to say, was Hurricane Sandy, an 85 m.p.h. deus ex machina that provided a boost to Mr. Obama and gave Mitt Romney a steep hurdle to overcome as he headed into the home stretch. Karl Rove said so much himself on Friday, even as hard-hit communities were still without power.

“If you hadn’t had the storm, there would have been more of a chance for the Romney campaign to talk about the deficit, the debt, the economy,” he pointed out to The Washington Post. “When you have attention drawn away to somewhere else, to something else, it is not to his advantage.”

He would say that, of course. He had to say something, after all, to preemptively soften the blow for disappointed donors who had funded his months-long anti-Obama ad blitz to the tune of some $171.5 million. We thought it was in the bag, guys, but who can predict a hurricane?

Mr. Rove knows the game. He saw firsthand how an unexpected calamity can thoroughly alter the political landscape as well as the physical one. The 9/11 attacks offered President George W. Bush opportunities for optics both bad (My Pet Goat) and good (the Megaphone Moment). Years later, FEMA’s tragically failed response to Hurricane Katrina and Mr. Bush’s ill-conceived support for Michael “Heckuva Job” Brown seriously damaged his presidency. (Just in case we needed a reminder of that disaster, Mr. Brown appeared in the Globe and Mail just two days after Sandy hit, urging New Yorkers to “just chill.”)

Crass as it is to point out, when the dust settles, Sandy will have left more in her wake than 100 deaths and untold billions in damage. The storm also upended the political field, offering elected officials and hopefuls alike a sudden array of unexpected risks and opportunities, scrambling the ideological calculus, reconfiguring alliances and laying bare much of the established rhetoric (particularly as it pertains to climate change and the proper role of government). President Obama was offered a gimme—the chance to act as comforter-in-chief and to demonstrate the beneficence of the federal government, while Mitt Romney was relegated to the sidelines, at least when he wasn’t being asked about his past suggestion that we eliminate FEMA altogether.

Meanwhile, Governors Cuomo and Christie, both widely regarded as potential presidential candidates for 2016, were able to demonstrate their ability to lead in a crisis, and Mayor Bloomberg got to erase any lingering memories of his Bermuda sojourn during the so-called “Snowpocalypse” of 2010.If only it weren’t for that marathon misstep—advocated, someone made sure to inform The New York Times, by his predecessor Rudolph Giuliani—he’d have turned in a pitch-perfect performance himself.

All of them were working on instinct. On the national level, many years of careful preparation and billions spent on focus groups, push polls, talking points and microtargeting were suddenly gone with the wind. Even with the lights flickering, the optics became high-def: everyone went off-message—they had to—and suddenly what mattered was the human touch, bluster and reflexes.

And, of course, leadership. That thing people elect them for in the first place.

Sometimes it takes a perfect storm to blow away all that hot air.

AROUND THE TIME MR. ROVE was evaluating the hurricane’s impact on the presidential race, Newark Mayor Cory Booker was hosting more than a dozen of his storm-tossed constituents at his home in the Upper Clinton Hill neighborhood. This was retail politics taken to an extreme: after sending out an invitation via Twitter, Mr. Booker opened his home to anyone who needed a crash pad, then brought in heaping trays of chicken, fish, macaroni and cheese, potato salad, corn bread and candied yams from a local restaurant. Families snuggled up wherever they could, and exhausted local children zoned out in front of a DVD of Happy Feet, ate Halloween candy and molded animals out of Play-Doh.

If they’d had enough of the stuff, they might have sculpted a giant bust of the mayor and slapped it up on Mount Rushmore. He’d earned it.

“It meant—I can’t even explain,” Alice Bell, one of the neighbors who took refuge in Mr. Booker’s home, told The Observer, her voice cracking with emotion. “I mean, we were—I’m still overwhelmed that he would reach out to us like that.”

Mr. Booker has long enjoyed a reputation as a “supermayor” for his hands-on style. (Remember the time he rushed into a burning building to save a woman from a house fire? His constituents do.)

But while Mr. Booker, who oversees a city of under 300,000 citizens, is a master of the personal touch—and of Twitter—that option is less realistic for state and federal politicians and mayors like Michael Bloomberg, whose constituents number in the millions. (Though, had he opened his Upper East Side townhouse, which is valued at over $30 million, it would have been quite a story.)

Mr. Booker’s response—apolitical as it seemed—was brilliant politics. “The best thing that a politician can do is keep away from politics and go volunteer, help out in giving out meals to the area, console the people that have been devastated and, in effect, give everyone a huge hug,” said political consultant George Arzt. “Don’t get in the way of first responders. You’re there as reassurance for people and inspiration.”

Mr. Christie, for his part, was so eager to avoid politics he wound up stumbling right into them. “If you think right now I give a damn about presidential politics, then you don’t know me,” he told Steve Doocy when asked about his extraordinarily warm embrace of Mr. Obama, prompting The New York Post to suggest that he make sure to reiterate his endorsement of Mr. Romney “or the Republican party will never forgive him.”

That said, given the widespread praise that has greeted Mr. Christie’s handling of the disaster, they might just have to.

WHILE THERE IS NO REAL POLITICAL playbook when it comes to handling disasters, politicians have been working on it for millennia now. Emperor Titus’s quick response to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius—and the massive fire that consumed much of Rome the following year—earned him approving shout-outs from the ancient press corps.

“In these many great calamities he showed not merely the concern of an emperor, but even a father’s surpassing love, now offering consolation in edicts, and now lending aid so far as his means allowed,” wrote the historian Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus.

Even unelected monarchs can be dethroned when they whiff on a major catastrophe. Emperor Haile Selassie I’s perceived mismanagement of the Wollo famine led to his overthow in 1974 in a Marxist military coup.

Former Chicago Mayor Michael Bilandic saw his hopes for re-election buried along with his city after what was considered a lackluster response to a blizzard. “In the end, God sent us 100 inches of snow in sub-zero weather, and I happened to lose and election because of it,” he would later reflect.

Mr. Bush’s job approval rating plummeted in September 2005, after his administration’s widely criticized response to Katrina—which included the misbegotten Air Force One flyover that led to one of the most damaging photo ops in history. The outcry was perhaps best summed up by rapper Kanye West, who proclaimed during a telethon that “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.” Five years later, in his memoir, Decision Points, Mr. Bush described the post-Katrina criticism from Mr. West and others as an “all time low” in his presidency.

“Emergency and disaster response is one of the most fundamental functions of government at every level,” noted Michael Tobman, a Brooklyn-based political consultant. “If it is bungled, as the Bush administration did with Katrina, it is never forgotten and never overlooked.”

NO DOUBT AWARE OF THE EXPERIENCES of his predecessors, on Monday, as the storm approached, Mr. Obama cancelled a planned campaign rally in the crucial battleground state of Florida and flew back to Washington. Even when the campaign resumed after a three-day pause, Mr. Obama’s traveling campaign press secretary made sure the public knew it was of secondary concern.

“I’ve spent the last two days with him ... in between every single event, he basically walks off the stage, gets on a phone call with governors or mayors or first responders—he’s on calls in the car, he’s on calls in the plane,” Jennifer Psaki said.

Contrary to the imaginings of some right-wing conspiracy theorists, Mr. Obama didn’t engineer the storm to juice his candidacy, but he handled it magnificently, leading to a windfall of unexpected praise from one of his chief detractors, Mr. Christie. The hurricane also brought a late-breaking endorsement of the president by Mayor Bloomberg, who had previously refrained from backing either of the candidates.

“The devastation that Hurricane Sandy brought to New York City and much of the Northeast—in lost lives, lost homes and lost business—brought the stakes of Tuesday’s presidential election into sharp relief,” Mayor Bloomberg wrote in an op-ed on, where else, Bloomberg View.

Along with kind words from his political colleagues, President Obama also experienced something of a storm surge in public opinion polls. Mr. Romney, on the other hand, found himself politically high and dry. Like Mr. Obama’s team, Mr. Romney’s campaign made the decision to cancel several of his planned events as Sandy bore down on the East Coast Monday afternoon.

Meanwhile, he and his aides hastily converted a planned Ohio “victory rally” into a “storm relief event.” According to a report in BuzzFeed, the Romney campaign hastily purchased $5,000 worth of supplies for the recovery effort to serve as props for supporters to “donate” at the event. The faux donations and blatantly political elements of the “storm relief event,” including a promotional video and “victory rally” badges handed out to reporters, led to a deluge of bad press.

INITIALLY, MAYOR BLOOMBERG’S handling of the storm was deemed exemplary. He ordered an evacuation of the city’s low-lying areas and opened city shelters while aggressively sounding the alarm before the floodwaters rolled in. Later, his low-key if businesslike demeanor in a series of press conferences (enlivened by his intriguingly effusive ASL interpreter) was almost soothing in its professorial tranquility.

Calm in a storm can only take you so far, though, as Mr. Bloomberg discovered in subsequent days. Fuel shortages, looting and continued power outages led to angry residents and harsh headlines. Those emotions faded as the city’s infrastructure returned and lights started to flicker on, but Mr. Bloomberg’s convincing performance of nonchalance may have turned prematurely into the real thing: as part of his effort to maintain a sense of normalcy, he vowed to continue with the planned New York City Marathon. The decision provoked the outrage of politicians in the hard-hit outerboroughs as well as the city’s tabloids. “Like hell,” scoffed The New York Post, adding, “Mayor Mike’s trademark Manhattan myopia is back.”

The anti-marathon backlash reached such a fever pitch that, by Friday evening, a person claiming to be an employee of the race’s host, New York Road Runners, sent a blistering, if anonymous, letter to the media calling for the marathon’s cancellation.

“I feel bad writing this,” the person wrote. “I have seen friends and coworkers work incredibly hard this year and in years past to put this event together ... But for me, that is all gone ... As an employee of New York Road Runners, a New Yorker, a runner, and a person I firmly believe that holding this race is wrong.”

Eventually, Mr. Bloomberg succumbed to the pressure and cancelled the marathon. It was a rare walk-back for a mayor who rarely suffers from self-doubt—and another sign that even the most skilled politician sometimes misreads the mood in times of crisis.

Meanwhile, though most of the media attention was focused on New York City and New Jersey, Gov. Andrew Cuomo played a central role in the response efforts—and stayed in front of the cameras. Having savaged his predecessor, George Pataki, for his seemingly lackadaisical response to the 9/11 attacks—“Pataki stood behind the leader,” he said at the time. “He held the leader’s coat ... Cream rises to the top, and Rudy Giuliani rose to the top”—Mr. Cuomo seized control of the response.  The storm saw the typically media-shy governor sitting down for interviews with several national television news hosts including Anderson Cooper, Brian Williams, Diane Sawyer and Rachel Maddow. On the topic of the state’s crisis-response efforts, Mr. Cuomo couldn’t help but sound, well, presidential. And he received national attention when, sitting across from Ms. Sawyer, he boldly addressed the elephant in the room—if not quite by name.

“I think Al Gore is right,” Mr. Cuomo said, raising the specter of climate change. “We have a ‘one hundred year flood’ every two years now! I think, at this point, it is undeniable that we have a higher frequency of these extreme weather situations. We’re going to have to deal with it.”

And where the mayor tended to shrug his shoulders at certain problems he described as beyond his control, Mr. Cuomo displayed a touch of aggression. After utility companies suggested it might take 10 days or more to restore electricity in some areas, he dashed off a letter to their CEOs threatening to revoke their licenses to do business in his state—then released it to the media.

“This is not just about effort,” he said at a press conference announcing the move. “This is about getting the job done.”

Political prognostication is a more inexact science than even meteorology. But it seems altogether possible we will be seeing that clip again a few years down the road, if Mr. Cuomo takes on Mr. Christie in 2016, Mr. Bloomberg endorses someone or other, and Mr. Booker solves the global warming crisis, reversing time itself by racing around the earth’s axis backward, really, really fast.

hwalker@observer.com

ccampbell@observer.com

This story has been updated to reflect the result of the presidential election.  

Seriously, right??! (YourFuckingPollingPlace.com)

With all the frustration over the absolute clusterfuck of trying to find out where you're supposed to cast your ballot tomorrow, it's good to know that at least one website has your back. Just type your address into YourFuckingPollingPlace.com and it will tell you where the fuck you are supposed to go.

Well, at least that's how it's supposed to work.

Yeah, well. It's not a miracle-worker.

Ms. Obama and the girls. Photo Courtesy of AP/WWD.

Word has gotten out from publicists and fashion news authority Women’s Wear Daily that first lady Michelle Obama has endorsed yet another one of Barbara Tfank’s ladylike designs for a heavily monitored public appearance. It is said to be the fifth time that the first lady has donned a Barbara Tfank frock. She wore the ravishing outfit at a meet-and-greet in Gainesville, Fla., for a young girls’ after-school program called Girls' Place on September 17.

"A friend, who Tfank had shown the unusual fabric to, spotted the dress on C-SPAN and called the designer to tell her the news,” reported WWD.

According to our perhaps inaccurate tally, this means that Ms. Obama has worn Tfank to more public appearances than any other high-end American fashion designer, which leads us to ask: Is Barbara Tfank Ms. Obama’s new designer of choice? Has Ms. Tfank overtaken the feminine and playful aesthetic of Jason Wu?

With the election fast approaching, this would come as no surprise. Back in February, during New York fashion week, Ms. Tfank told The Observer, “It really interests me that the people who gravitate towards my clothes ... they’re women that are communicators—they have very strong opinions. I think that my clothes allow for women to show themselves, their power.”

Barbara Tfank at her New York Fashion Week presentation on September 10.

While Ms. Tfank would not comment specifically on her working relationship with the first lady, respecting her privacy, she did tell The Observer in an email today that “she represents all that is good about America.  Her inherent luminosity and warm personality can only enhance the quality of any designer’s work.”

The cerulean, marine and sky-blue mosaic print dress was reported to have been made of vintage fabric from Bianchini-Férier and is silk twill, according to WWD. The newspaper stated that the print fabric was created by artist Raoul Dufy and that Ms. Tfank had purchased the material at auction.

“I am honored that she chooses to wear my designs,” Ms. Tfank concluded in her email.

We’ll have to wait and see what else comes from this dynamic design duo. Best keep your eyes on the red-white-and-blue podiums.

President Obama, working up an appetite.

The Dog Days have come early to this year's presidential race with the revelation by the Daily Caller that our  president was fed dog meat by his stepfather as a boy living in Indonesia. President Obama disclosed this information in his little-known TIME Magazine top 100 non-fiction bestseller, Dreams from My Father, a 1995 memoir of his well-traveled youth.

If the Obama White House feels moved to complain about the hay their opponents are making (the Twitter hash tag #ObamaDogRecipes trended across party lines Tuesday night) out of this unfortunate nugget from his book they may have only themselves to blame. As ABC newsman Jake Tapper pointed out, Democrats have been relentless in promoting the tale of Mitt Romney's unfortunate dog Seamus, who reportedly rode on the roof of the Romney family vehicle from Boston to Canada in 1983:

Democrats have signaled they have every intention of making sure the American people — especially dog-lovers — know the tale. In January, senior Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod tweeted a photo of the president and Bo in a car, with the snide observation: "@davidaxelrod: How loving owners transport their dogs."

The real topper on the whole shaggy tale at this point would be if Mr. Romney chose to add former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as his running mate. While Mr. Huckabee's record towards furry friends appears to be on the up-and-up, one of his son's alleged acts against a stray dog was passing fodder for political opponents during Mr. Huckabee's 2007-2008 run for the Republican presidential nod.

If dogs really step up and form a lobby, perhaps even their own political action committee, everyone may be in trouble.

Perhaps the most sweeping reform on Mr. Cuomo’s 2012 agenda is nothing less than a systematic reconfiguration of the state’s sprawling bureaucracy. The governor has invoked the spirit of one of his most celebrated predecessors, Alfred E. Smith, who modernized state government in the 1920s with a series of administrative reforms that made Albany more accountable, efficient—and humane. (Yes, it’s possible to be all three.) Many historians believe that Smith’s administrative reorganization of Albany was his greatest achievement.

Nearly a century later, Albany is in desperate need of another retooling. That seems to be just what Mr. Cuomo had in mind last year when he formed a Spending and Government Efficiency Commission, which has been dubbed SAGE. Let’s hope the commissioners live up to the acronym.

The commissioners are expected to recommend consolidations and other changes to make state agencies more efficient. Does every state agency need its own public information office? Is there a way to centralize some agency operations to avoid duplication? Implementing these kinds of systemic changes will require an extraordinary degree of flexibility in operational funds.

Here’s the rub: The state will (with any luck) pass a new budget by April 1. Ordinarily, the budget would lock in the spending plans for each agency for the remainder of the fiscal year. But Mr. Cuomo has proposed language in this year’s budget that would give him the power to shift operational money from agency to agency on his own, without the Legislature’s approval.

That has some legislators and Albany observers worried. Several have argued that the Legislature should not simply give Mr. Cuomo the power to unilaterally change a document—the budget—which was agreed upon after negotiations between the governor and legislative leaders.

The concern is understandable, but unnecessary. Mr. Cuomo’s office points out that the language in the budget applies only to operational money. In other words, the governor could not simply cut state-funded programs. He simply wants the authority to shift operational money so that consolidation and other efficiencies can be implemented this year, rather than having to wait until the fiscal year beginning on April 1, 2013.

Mr. Cuomo has earned the right to be trusted with this extraordinary authority. These are, after all, extraordinary times, but the governor has managed to take on a host of difficult issues without the nasty confrontations that have marred state capitals from Trenton to Madison, Wis. He has earned the trust of taxpayers and his colleagues in the Legislature.

When the SAGE recommendations are released, Mr. Cuomo should have the ability to implement the changes without having to negotiate each change with the Legislature. Remember, these will be operational, not programmatic, reforms. They apply to the administration of programs, not to the programs themselves.

State government desperately needs a housecleaning. Mr. Cuomo made administrative reform one of his top campaign promises in 2010. This is not a particularly sexy issue—few hearts beat faster when they hear the words “administrative reform”—but it is absolutely vital for the state’s fiscal health.

There is no cause for alarm. There is no executive overreach in Albany.

Michelle Bachmann with her husband, Marcus, and her daughter, Elisa, in 2008.

Michele Bachmann's husband, Marcus, knows how to put on a pair of heels. How did we learn this fascinating tidbit about the spouse of the Minnesota Congresswoman and Republican Presidential candidate? We found it on Facebook courtesy of Bachmann's daughter.

Bachmann's staff clearly has some lessons left to learn about the internet. This apparent lack of social media savvy is especially interesting given the recent signs her campaign may be in disarray. We're here to help -- and we don't charge billable hours. You're welcome Michelle Bachmann.

Even though the media has already scrutinized the Facebook profile of Bachmann's eldest son, he and two of her other five biological children have searchable pages on the social networking site. In March, The Daily Beast published details gleaned from the Facebook profile of Lucas Bachmann, who it described as one of Bachmann's "closest advisers." The Beast noted two of Lucas' three selected interests on Facebook; "India" and conservative thinker "William F. Buckley" to make the point that Lucas' "political hero" is "decidedly un-Bachmann-like."

Bachmann shouldn't have been blindsided by a media outlet using her son's Facebook to write an unflattering article about her. In this day and age, campaign advisers should be schooled in the damage that can be done from an uncalculated quote or, worse yet, an indiscreet photo posted on a social media site.

Everyone should be free enjoy the unique pleasures of poking, stalking and playing mindless games of Farmville that come with unrestricted membership on a social media site, but we live in an unfair world. For better or worse, the families of presidential candidates should be coached to expect this level of scrutiny during a White House run and taught how to avoid it. Despite their modern media lesson from the Daily Beast, her children still haven't been taught to maintain their privacy online. Someone on Bachmann's staff dropped the ball here.

Michelle Bachmann's advisor and son Lucas Bachmann, guns blazing.

The pictures and details visible on the Facebook pages of the Bachmann children are relatively harmless. They're certainly not a social media faux pas along the lines of Anthony Weiner's infamous naked Twitter pictures, Willow Palin's homophobic tirade or Oregon Rep. David Wu's crazypants emails, but these glimpses into Bachmann's home life are unseemly cracks in the managed public facade that all politicians should seek to project on the campaign trail.

Lucas Bachmann's Facebook profile is still searchable. Along with his interest in Buckley and India there's a picture of him standing in front of a poster of Andy Warhol's "Triple Elvis" print wearing what appears to be a Johnny Cash t-shirt. Curious onlookers can contact him or view his "basic information," where he describes himself as "Trying to figure out my life after two years of being on pause!" That's hardly the kind of image a top advisor to a presidential candidate should be conveying a little over a year before the election.

Marcus Bachmann helps his daughter get ready for the prom in 2008.

Visitors to Lucas' Facebook profile can also see his list of friends, which includes the pages of his brother, Harrison, and his sister, Elisa. Those pages can be used to contact Elisa and Harrison, and also be used to view private Bachmann family photos. Elisa's page includes a publicly visible photo album of her senior prom in 2008 with a rather awkward picture of Marcus Bachmann and her sister kneeling at her feet to help her put on her heels.

"How many Bachmanns does it take to put a shoe on?" asks Elisa's caption for the prom picture. A fascinating question indeed!

Axelrod, speaking at the National Action Network in midtown this morning, said the president replied, "Don't kid yourself; If things were good, we never would have gotten the job."

The audience laughed and Axelrod wrapped up his speech a few minutes later.

Axelrod is one of the main message men and strategists for President Obama's recently-announced re-election campaign and the narrative he's weaving is a harrowing one. As Axelrod puts it, Obama was forced to make a series of choices that were "as necessary as they were unpopular."

Axelrod said the Republican strategy in Congress was to deny President Obama any bi-partisan support, which he called "diabolical," but "effective."

But Axelrod maintained that the tides are turning in Obama's favor. An obscure judicial race in Wisconsin pitting an ally of union-bashing Gov. Walker versus a little-known progressive was "a deadheat," and is now "in a recount."

"We have more work to do and everyone in this room knows it," he said.

 "I have this whole notion that I talk about all the time, that life really is a journey," he said. "It's not about a destination, and you darn better well like the process or change it and there is one person in control and that's you."

Mr. Johnson may sound like a desert state spiritualist tripped out in turquoise and crystals, but, he is in fact a construction magnate, former two-term governor of New Mexico and now a G.O.P. candidate for President of the United States.

He had come to appear on a panel at the Union League Club about "finding more meaningful endeavors in your life."

"That's the journey part of it," he said while trying to find a spot of March sunshine. "Life is a journey and part of that journey is that anything that can go wrong, will. So if life is a destination you are destined for failure because things get in the way."

Mr. Johnson's aides had just begun to leak to Politico that a presidential announcement was in the offing, slated, in fact for April 15, Tax Day, in New Hampshire. Mr. Johnson now leads a PAC called "Our America Initiative," which forbids him from speaking directly about a presidential run.

"I don't want to get sideways with it, but if you were going to run you would have to think that you would announce in a fairly short amount of time," he said. "Speaking hypothetically, time is drawing near. Truly!"

Mr. Johnson is one of those Republicans who are beloved by magazine journalists for their willingness to depart from party orthodoxy, and he has received warm profiles in The Atlantic and Salon. He favors decriminalizing marijuana, legalizing prostitution, ending all foreign entanglements and vastly reducing the size of the federal government. If that sounds a lot like the profile of perennial Republican contender Ron Paul, it is not a comparison that Mr. Johnson shies away from. He says that he was Mr. Paul's most high-profile endorser in 2008.

"I supported Ron Paul, I support Ron Paul and I agree with the things he says. But," Mr. Johnson add, "I am not Ron Paul. I am not Ron Paul. We have different personalities."

He is running, he says to give Republicans a choice in who they want to be their spokesman. The early returns have not signaled that they want that spokesman to be Mr. Johnson. A recent poll gave him only 2 percent of the Republican vote, less than even Mr. Paul. Still, he is forging ahead. His time in New York, besides Union League panels, is punctuated with meeting with donors and appearing on not one but three shows on Fox.

So far, Mr. Johnson, who lives on the side of a mountain in Taos and is preparing to marry his girlfriend of three years some time in the next couple of months, has resisted the Republican field's reflexive snarling about anything Obama-related. In fact, he refuses to say anything negative about any of his opponents.

"I have this theory that we are all in search of a state of Zen and that very simply is just being in the present," he said, "Back to life's a journey-if you enjoy where you at, man, how can you ask for more in your life."

That's a very healthy attitude for a politician, The Observer remarked.

"Yea, it is," he said.

"I couldn't wait to thank you," wrote Gillibrand, who is up for re-election again in 2012, before she resumes the usual six-year schedule. "Our campaign just closed its books for the FEC filing period and I am proud to tell you that we have broken our all-time highest campaign record and raised over $3 million in the first quarter."

Gillibrand has always been a prodigious fundraiser--even during the many months she was derided as being "vulnerable"--so breaking her own record is saying something. (Update: Her previous high quarter, according to a spokesman, was $2.3 million in the first quarter of 2009, her first since being elevated to the Senate.)

And while it's never easy to discern what moves people to open their checkbooks, there are a few factors that probably helped her along.

In December, she got a raft of good press--including a couple front-page, above-the-fold stories in The New York Times--for her work on the 9/11 health care bill and for her efforts to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell.

The Republican House probably didn't hurt either, as the incoming majority threatened to gut the health care bill and defund Planned Parenthood--issues that Gillibrand and other Democrats used to solicit donations, in order to better fight their new foil.

But, perhaps more than anything, donors--as a general rule--like to give to a winner, and Gillibrand's big victory in November, coupled with her highest-ever poll numbers and a lack of credible challengers who seem to be eyeing her seat, makes her a better investment than she has anytime since her appointment two years ago.

Here's the full email:

Dear Friend,

I couldn't wait to thank you. Our campaign just closed its books for the FEC filing period and I am proud to tell you that we have broken our all-time highest campaign record and raised over $3 million in the first quarter. I am astounded and humbled by the outpouring of grassroots support from all over New York.

Thanks to you, and the generosity of thousands of others just like you, we have given our potential opponents 3 million reasons to understand that a fight for our Senate seat won't be easy. This campaign will be a long and tough road, but we are off to a great start.

Your support and friendship continue to make all the difference.

Kirsten

 

"People can grumble all they want up until the president walks in a room," said Jacobs, who chairs the state Democratic committee, in addition to being a high-profile party fundraiser. "Believe me, it's unbelievable how grumbling just dissipates."

As I reported last night, among the 50 or so supporters who attended the intimate dinner were at least a few donors who had previously expressed their dissatisfaction with President Obama--a development that other Obama supporters took as a sign that the criticism from the financial services sector had largely subsided.

Jacobs added that he didn't hear any grumbling even before the president arrived.

"I was at the cocktail hour before and everyone was very upbeat about Barack Obama and the job he's done," he said.

Jacobs said he thought Obama was particularly good in the 10 to 15 minutes he spent answering questions at his table on Tuesday night, on everything from whether his action in Libya set a precedent (no) to whether the U.S. remains the global economic leader, given the slumping economy and how much of our national debt is owned by other countries (yes).

"I thought the president was on his game," Jacobs said.

"The sense that I had from everybody, was that they were excited to be there, they support him, they were looking forward to this election," he said. "A number of people were already talking about raising money for him, for the campaign, once the campaign kicks off."

The president was feeling good too, despite polls still showing him tight with a number of Republican challengers.

"I think the president was pretty confident that the trending is in the right direction on the economy and on jobs. Not where we want to be yet. But he feels the American people will understand the trending."

Jacobs said there was likely to be another New York event sometime toward the end of April, and said he expects the donor community to rally around the president.

"As far as raising money, everybody's got to do their part," he said. "I've done it in the past, I'm going to do it again. And I think everyone in that room felt very much the same way."