When President Biden made clear final 12 months that he was planning to run for one more time period, some essential Democratic contributors expressed doubt. He was too previous, they feared. He was lower than one other 4 years.
It fell to Jeffrey Katzenberg to inform them they have been fallacious. When some nonetheless didn’t imagine him, Mr. Katzenberg challenged them to return to Washington and discover out for themselves — then organized to convey the doubtful donors to the White Home to take a seat down with the octogenarian president to persuade them he was nonetheless sharp sufficient.
“He was like, ‘Belief me. And in the event you don’t belief me, belief, however confirm. Include me and see for your self and have interaction with the president,’” Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, a longtime ally of Mr. Katzenberg, recounted in an interview. “And he began doing that in a constant means.” Ultimately, Mr. Newsom added, “He actually was instrumental in getting individuals off the sidelines and getting them to dive headfirst on this marketing campaign.”
Few have dived headfirst into the president’s re-election marketing campaign extra totally than Mr. Katzenberg. The longtime Hollywood mogul identified for “The Lion King” and “Shrek,” amongst many others, Mr. Katzenberg has been one of the vital prolific money turbines for Democratic presidents for a era. On Saturday evening, he’ll convey Mr. Biden along with former President Barack Obama, George Clooney, Julia Roberts and Jimmy Kimmel for a star-studded fund-raiser in Los Angeles, following the $26 million fund-raiser at Radio Metropolis Music Corridor in March he organized with Mr. Obama and former President Invoice Clinton.
Whereas Mr. Katzenberg has not solved Mr. Biden’s age drawback by any means and Biden aides famous that a few of these he dropped at the White Home didn’t want convincing, his efforts to validate the president with the well-heeled set have helped construct a battle chest that has been outpacing the Trump marketing campaign. However he has gone far past his previous political work, becoming a member of Mr. Biden’s marketing campaign as a co-chairman and investing himself totally within the effort to defeat former President Donald J. Trump.
He might be discovered within the halls of the West Wing providing recommendation and counsel. He was at Camp David the weekend earlier than the State of the Union handle, serving to the president put together for his nationally televised speech. He pushes the marketing campaign to tape response movies of the president for social media and related Biden aides with writers to assist provide you with jokes for the president to ship on the White Home Correspondents’ Affiliation dinner.
“He’s a real believer within the significance of this election,” stated Rob Flaherty, the deputy marketing campaign supervisor. “He speaks about it in actually existential phrases. He talks about how that is what he needs to spend his time on and he can’t concentrate on the rest. He’s a extremely relentless man.”
The president speaks with Mr. Katzenberg a number of occasions per week, as do lots of his advisers. “To the most effective of my data, this man doesn’t sleep,” stated Jeffrey D. Zients, the White Home chief of employees, noting that he was talking in a private capability, not in a marketing campaign function. “He’s 24/7. That’s invaluable.”
He is usually a handful, although. “He doesn’t take no for a solution,” stated Rufus Gifford, the marketing campaign’s finance chair. “He positively has an opinion and argues it vociferously, which I recognize.” The 2 discuss a lot, Mr. Gifford stated, that “he calls us Batman and Robin. We argue about who’s Batman and who’s Robin.”
It’s no actual shock that Democrats are completely happy to supply testimonials to Mr. Katzenberg. For years, he has been the celebration’s go-to man to faucet Hollywood cash, elevating hundreds of thousands of {dollars} for Mr. Clinton, Mr. Obama and others. It’s likewise no shock that skeptics surprise what’s in it for him. Huge-dollar fund-raisers often need one thing, whether or not or not it’s coverage or perks. Mr. Katzenberg has loads of enterprise pursuits nowadays, primarily within the know-how sector.
But when he has an ask, Democrats say he has not made it but. “I by no means received a way that there was any private curiosity, if you understand what I imply. By no means. By no means,” stated Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles, who benefited from Mr. Katzenberg’s assist in her 2022 election. “He’s not making an attempt to be an envoy. He’s not making an attempt to have a cupboard place.”
Trim and wiry, intense however amiable, Mr. Katzenberg at age 73 nonetheless exudes a form of formidable, animal vitality as if he have been one among his film protagonists. He’s well-known round Hollywood, and now Washington, for rising at 5 a.m. and using an train bicycle for 90 minutes whereas concurrently studying 4 newspapers earlier than taking as many as three breakfast conferences — and waffles or eggs-and-extra-crispy-bacon breakfasts, not the leafy California form. “The man eats like a horse and he doesn’t acquire any weight,” his shut buddy Casey Wasserman, the sports activities, music and leisure mogul, groused good-naturedly.
Mr. Katzenberg declined to present an interview for this story, however in public boards has described himself as a “super-triple-type-A” character and a demanding boss who grew to become well-known for telling staff that if they didn’t come to work on Saturday, they need to not trouble displaying up on Sunday. “Exceed expectations” is his two-word mantra.
“I’m not a bunter,” he stated in an onstage interview on the Summit Palm Desert in California in 2022. “I’m not a base hitter. I’m not a runner. I solely know one factor: My complete profession has at all times been about, swing for the fence.” He has no persistence for second greatest. “Present me a superb loser — I’ll present you a loser,” he stated.
Mr. Katzenberg grew up in New York’s Higher East Facet, the son of a Wall Avenue stockbroker and an artist who despatched him to Moral Tradition Fieldston Faculty. He picked up a love of playing from his father that received him kicked out of summer season camp.
At free ends, {the teenager} then went to work for Mayor John V. Lindsay, ultimately turning into the mayor’s physique man carrying his papers and luggage of money to pay for speech venues within the days earlier than bank cards have been extra extensively used. “That was my faculty diploma,” stated Mr. Katzenberg, who dropped out of New York College.
In the end, he went west and have become an assistant to Barry Diller, the media tycoon, and labored his means into the movie enterprise, turning into near Lew Wasserman, the longtime Hollywood energy dealer. “My grandfather handed him the baton,” stated Casey Wasserman, now chairman of the Los Angeles 2028 Summer time Olympics. “He doesn’t play numerous video games. He’s actually extremely straight down the center. What you see is what you get.”
First at Walt Disney Studios after which, after being pushed out in an influence wrestle, at DreamWorks, the agency he based with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, Mr. Katzenberg helped shepherd to the display screen movies like “Star Trek: The Movement Image,” “Raiders of the Misplaced Ark,” “Good Morning, Vietnam,” “Fairly Girl” and “Lifeless Poets Society” in addition to animated classics like “Aladdin,” “The Little Mermaid,” “Madagascar” and “Kung Fu Panda.” By his personal rely, he had a hand in 406 live-action films, 41 animated films, greater than 85 tv exhibits and 5 Broadway performs.
Not identified for extreme self-doubt, he was introduced low when his effort to construct a streaming video app for short-form content material with Meg Whitman, the previous C.E.O. of eBay, proved an embarrassing flop. Regardless of $1.75 billion in funding, their start-up agency Quibi folded after barely six months, unable to discover a market throughout Covid in opposition to rivals like TikTok. His know-how funding agency, WndrCo (pronounced Surprise Firm), nevertheless, simply introduced this month it had raised one other $460 million in enterprise capital funds.
Mr. Katzenberg, estimated to be value $2.1 billion, has lengthy indulged his curiosity in politics and has grow to be what Paul Begala, the longtime Democratic strategist, known as “the best fund-raiser alive.” Mr. Begala, a local Texan, famous that ranchers put a bell across the neck of a lead cow for the herd to comply with. “Jeffrey Katzenberg is the Democratic Celebration’s bell cow,” he stated.
Mr. Begala stated Mr. Katzenberg was so fervent that he known as on Election Evening 2012 when Mr. Obama was declared the winner. “Who’re we for in 2016?” Mr. Katzenberg demanded. “I believe it must be Hillary. We must always get began.” Mr. Begala recalled protesting that he had not but celebrated that evening’s victory: “Jeffrey, I haven’t even had time to get drunk.”
However which means Mr. Katzenberg can get forward of issues. On Election Day 2016, when Hillary Clinton was anticipated to defeat Mr. Trump, Mr. Katzenberg met on the Waldorf Astoria New York with the actor Alec Baldwin. The 2 have been mapping out plans for a tv comedy starring Mr. Baldwin as Mr. Trump in another actuality during which he had gained the presidency.
Like many Democrats, Mr. Katzenberg nurses a visceral dislike of Mr. Trump. He has instructed associates that he met Mr. Trump in New York many years in the past and thought even then that the true property tycoon was entitled and impolite. “He was a colossal” jerk “then and nothing has actually modified,” he instructed a gathering in West Hollywood sponsored by Axios final month, utilizing an expletive. Not that it stopped Mr. Katzenberg from making a visitor look on “The Apprentice” with Mr. Trump in 2006.
When requested why he’s so decided now to defeat Mr. Trump, Mr. Katzenberg typically tells a narrative a few highschool task to interview his European-born grandparents about the place they have been earlier than World Struggle II. He found that they didn’t imagine Adolf Hitler posed an actual hazard throughout his rise. He tells associates that he doesn’t need his grandchildren to ask what he was doing when his personal nation confronted the same take a look at.
Mr. Trump additionally occurs to suit into Mr. Katzenberg’s concept of politics and flicks: He likes to cite Walt Disney saying that films are solely pretty much as good as their villains. Mr. Trump is way simpler to current to voters as a villain than, say, John McCain or Mitt Romney have been.
If Mr. Trump is Scar from “The Lion King,” Mr. Katzenberg sees Mr. Biden as Mufasa, the smart father-king. It might not be the most effective analogy — Scar kills Mufasa in a coup to take over the Pleasure Lands and it falls to Mufasa’s son Simba to hunt justice and topple the usurper.
However the level is that Mr. Katzenberg has been pushing the Biden crew to consider the marketing campaign as a narrative to inform. “He’s a superb thought associate on the way you convey the assorted parts collectively,” stated Michael Tyler, the marketing campaign communications director, who estimates that he talks with Mr. Katzenberg a number of occasions per week. “How do you create a second? How do you be certain that it’s not a run-of-the-mill second?”
That was why he was at Camp David earlier than the State of the Union, sitting in Aspen Lodge together with the president’s advisers. Mr. Katzenberg didn’t write or edit the speech, however provided his ideas about easy methods to body the narrative, together with pleas for brevity that weren’t solely profitable. He has argued that Mr. Biden ought to lean into the age concern, calling the president’s longevity “his superpower.”
Mr. Katzenberg isn’t a coverage wonk, though these days he has been absorbed by the issue of homelessness in Los Angeles. He has pressed Mayor Bass on that concern and even flew to Sacramento in a raging storm for a 15-minute assembly with Governor Newsom to advocate for a extra strong homeless coverage earlier than turning round to fly dwelling.
None of that compares to his ardour for the Biden marketing campaign, although. Even his beneficiaries discover it curious that he’s so all-in on this marketing campaign. “I’ve requested him in 10 other ways on 10 completely different days, ‘Why are you doing this?’” Mr. Newsom recalled. “He seems to be at me cross-eyed and will get upset each time I ask him what are you after right here.”
