President Barack Obama rolls into town for another fundraising-only visit

Barack Oba­ma has land­ed in our Wash­ing­ton for his first sec­ond-term vis­it as Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States, after a flight last­ing a lit­tle less than five hours from Joint Base Andrews in Mary­land. As with past vis­its to our state, the Pres­i­dent has no pub­lic or offi­cial events sched­uled, just fundrais­ers for the DNC and the DCCC, mak­ing this just the lat­est in a series of cash ‘n dash visits.

Unusu­al­ly, Air Force One touched down at Seat­tle-Taco­ma Inter­na­tion­al Air­port instead of Boe­ing Field, which meant nor­mal oper­a­tions had to be tem­porar­i­ly paused until the Pres­i­dent was off and away in his motor­cade. The Pres­i­dent emerged from the dis­tinc­tive­ly-paint­ed Boe­ing 747 he usu­al­ly travles in to decid­ed­ly nicer weath­er than what he left behind, as recount­ed in the pool report:

Air Force One touched down at 4:16 Pacif­ic Time in Seat­tle, and the Pres­i­dent gave a lit­tle wave as he walked out of the plane twelve min­utes lat­er. The sun­set cast­ing a pink glow on Mount Ranier, com­bined with the rel­a­tive­ly balmy fifty degree tem­per­a­ture, made it feel down­right trop­i­cal com­pared to that frigid oth­er Wash­ing­ton the pres­i­dent just came from.

We’re en route to the first fundrais­er, for the DNC, at a pri­vate res­i­dence. Expect­ed dri­ve about half an hour.

The Pres­i­den­t’s first stop will be the home of Tom and Sonya Cam­pi­on. The event they are host­ing will ben­e­fit the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee. Around thir­ty sup­port­ers attend­ed, con­tribut­ing up to $32,400.

Tom Cam­pi­on is the co-founder of Zumiez, which sells appar­el pri­mar­i­ly to young peo­ple. Aside from being major Demo­c­ra­t­ic donors, Tom and Sonya are also phil­an­thropists and cham­pi­ons of envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion. Tom serves on the boards of the Alas­ka Wilder­ness League and Con­ser­va­tion North­west; while Sonya serves on the boards of Seat­tle-King-Sno­homish Coun­ty YWCA, Whit­man Col­lege Board of Over­seers and Fun­ders Togeth­er to End Homelessness.

The Pres­i­den­t’s sec­ond stop will be at the home of Jon Shirley in Med­i­na. This event will ben­e­fit the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gres­sion­al Cam­paign Com­mit­tee (DCCC). The White House has indi­cat­ed it will make avail­able a tran­script of the pres­i­den­t’s remarks at this event, and reporters will be allowed inside for just that part.

The event at the Cam­pi­ons’ is closed press and no tran­script is expect­ed to be made avail­able of the Pres­i­den­t’s con­ver­sa­tion with DNC donors.

SR 520’s Ever­green Point Float­ing Bridge is expect­ed to be closed by mid-evening so that the pres­i­den­tial motor­cade can make it over to Med­i­na for the 7:10 PM DCCC fundrais­er. Fol­low­ing this event, the Pres­i­dent will return to Seat­tle and spend the night at the West­in, where he has stayed before.

The Pres­i­dent will depart for San Fran­cis­co tomor­row at 8:50 AM. His motor­cade will be on the road dur­ing the 7 AM and 8 AM hours.

If you com­mute to work on I‑5 or SR ⁹⁹⁄₅₀₉ between Seatac/Des Moines and Seat­tle on week­day morn­ings, be aware that traf­fic tomor­row could be snarled, as one of those high­ways is almost cer­tain to be closed so that the Pres­i­den­t’s motor­cade can get back to Sea-Tac Air­port. Traf­fic will prob­a­bly also be worse than usu­al on oth­er high­ways too due to the domi­no effect caused by the closure.

UPDATE, 6:45 PM: KIRO just aired a report on the pres­i­den­t’s vis­it. The net­work’s Chris Leg­eros report­ed that many peo­ple watch­ing from the win­dows clapped as Air Force One touched down and snapped pictures.

Leg­eros asked a few peo­ple if they were both­ered by the flight delays but appar­ent­ly no one was upset. One man said he had tak­en video of the land­ing and planned to do some work on his lap­top before board­ing his delayed flight. Anoth­er man showed Leg­eros the pic­tures he’d tak­en through the win­dows with his Canon DSLR, say­ing he’d nev­er been so close to Air Force One.