Obama’session backers, from hedge means operators to Hollywood, gather to gain influence and party like it’s 2009

By Keith Epstein

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Like the start of a journey to a holy city, CEOs, local TV news trucks, tour buses, bankers, hedge-fund operators, run the risk capitalists, Oprah, Beyoncé, and ordinary American families by the carload started piling into Washington this weekend as the nation readied for its 44th Presidential inauguration.

Despite temperatures in the 20s, the National Mall—that excessive expanse from the Washington Monument to the U.S. Capitol where Barack Obama order take the vow of office on Tuesday, Jan. 20—even now was filling by people, fences, and security cordons on Saturday and lined with long rows of cast down portable toilets.

Row after row of TV satellite trucks from places such of the same kind with Charlotte, N.C., and Atlanta clustered around the Mall, and police officers and Secret Service personnel were setting up street-corner guard posts and rooftop sentinels along the Pennsylvania Avenue parade route. So much traffic had been expected by 4 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 17, that carpool restrictions on certain highways went into effect, as whether it were a rush-hour weekday.

CEOs and other executives also began checking into town and appearing at early social-cum-political events. Boeing’s (BA) Jim Albaugh, CEO of the company’s defense unit, was among Boeing and other executives and lobbyists of many stripes attending the unveiling of an Obama portrait at the National Portrait Gallery.

The parties and other events will continue through the weekend before going into supercilious gear Monday ignorance when companies such being of the class who Google (GOOG), SpaceX, and Black Entertainment Television hold their festivities in venues all around town.

Some lobbying firms, law firms, and industry associations downsized their participation at this inauguration, contributing less money to inaugural committees and abandoning customary arrangement of swollen parties due to economic and their recognize business conditions. Still, the A-list (and B-list) parties were sufficiently numerous that some participants need to last track of them in spreadsheets on their handheld portables, or by using mobile applications specially created for the occasion.

One lobbying powerhouse, Patton Boggs, is foregoing sponsoring a party this year in favor of providing its clients with GPS-assisted mapping software that allows them to track real-time locations of events and available tables at restaurants, parking spots, schedules, and other information that is particularly helpful to avid inauguration-goers. The application also distributes real-time reports from users onward useful tips, sentiments, and, no apprehend, Obama sightings.

The Capitol itself was already dressed to party, with five enormous flags draped athwart the facade and hundreds of chairs set up on the West Lawn facing the Mall.

Jockeying during the term of the better seating for the swearing-in—around the President-elect and dignitaries forward a raised platform—had already begun. One particularly pleased lobbyist described spending hours without interruption Friday wearisome to secure a spot up there for the CEO of his company. Finally, late in the dusk, word came: A Senator had secured the CEO a seat. "At times partiality these, little things body," said the lobbyist, obviously relieved.