The $75 Million Woman

Hildebrand and Obama's Senate chief of staff, Pete Rouse, had worked on campaigns with Smoot. Hildebrand was the campaign manager when Smoot raised a staggering $21 million for the failed 2004 reelection bid of Sen. Thomas A. Daschle (S.D.). As Obama started contemplating a White House run, Hildebrand had a feeling that Smoot's blend of Southern charm and brash straight talk might make a perfect counter to Obama's more languid approach to fundraising.

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Obama had gathered a list of 15,000 potential donors, a number that might have been impressive for a statewide campaign in Illinois but not for a national bid. Although he had made important contacts while traveling the country in 2006 to stump for Senate candidates, there was no guarantee that these people would back him over other Democrats already aggressively courting donors.

Smoot returned to Hildebrand and Rouse with a detailed plan that described how the senator could build the foundation for a national campaign. She proposed a finance staff of 31, a minimum of 10 hours of call time by the candidate each week, and a first-quarter travel schedule to shuttle Obama to the party's traditional fundraising centers in New York, California, Texas, Florida, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

In each locale, she identified scores of people who could become the core of a robust network of bundlers. Still, "without an extraordinary time commitment to fundraising from the candidate on the front end of this endeavor," she warned, "the finance team can only do so much."

If everything went perfectly during the first three months, she told them flatly, they could expect to raise $9 million. Rouse and Hildebrand were sold.

During the first week of December, Obama flew to New York, where billionaire George Soros had gathered wealthy executives in his office to meet the senator. Among those attending was Robert Wolf, the chief executive and chairman of UBS Americas, who had helped raise money for Sen. John F. Kerry's 2004 presidential bid. They talked presidential politics, Wolf said, "but at that point there was no ask." As he left, the banker handed his card to an Obama aide, and the senator called him early the next morning to invite him to dinner.

During the second week of January, with Obama's announcement still a month away, the two dined alone at Olives on K Street for more than two hours. "We talked about things important to me, and to him, and the future of the nation, and family values, and our ideas on health care and the war and the economy," Wolf recalled. "At this point, it was certainly clear that a presidential bid was much more likely."

They had a second dinner a few weeks later. This time Obama, Smoot and a small group of New Yorkers joined them to talk about how they would tap Manhattan for campaign funds. Wolf was on board and was on his way to becoming one of the senator's most prolific fundraisers.

As Obama's announcement neared, his outreach intensified.

Smoot began traveling regularly with the senator so he could work the phones as he drove to events. It got so that Obama would grimace every time she got in the car with him, she said. Smoot's previous job was with Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), an aggressive fundraiser who worked the phones fanatically and who had no hesitation about making "the ask."

Obama worked more slowly, she said, and resisted her efforts to have prospects stay on hold so he could jump briskly from call to call. "He's nice like that -- not like Chuck," Smoot said with a smile. "Last week in the car, we got through four or five [calls] in 45 minutes. He chats with them a lot longer than Schumer does. I'm just, like" -- snapping her fingers -- " 'hurry up, hurry up.' "

On Jan. 24, when Kerry announced he would not run, Smoot called all regional staffers and urged them to pounce. "We were all over it," Smoot's deputy, Ami Copeland, said. "You just knew if someone hasn't gone with Hillary, there's a reason."