Business Flocks to the Inauguration

Obama's backers, from hedge fund operators to Hollywood, gather to gain influence and party like it's 2009

By Keith Epstein

Like the start of a pilgrimage to a holy city, CEOs, local TV news trucks, tour buses, bankers, hedge-fund operators, venture 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 great expanse from the Washington Monument to the U.S. Capitol where Barack Obama will take the oath of office on Tuesday, Jan. 20—already was filling with people, fences, and security cordons on Saturday and lined with long rows of blue portable toilets.

Row after row of TV satellite trucks from places such as 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 if 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.

Party Mapping Software

The parties and other events will continue through the weekend before going into high gear Monday night when companies such as 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 big parties due to economic and their own business conditions. Still, the A-list (and B-list) parties were sufficiently numerous that some participants need to keep 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 useful to avid inauguration-goers. The application also distributes real-time reports from users on useful tips, sentiments, and, no doubt, Obama sightings.

Jockeying for Prime Seating

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

Jockeying for the better seating for the swearing-in—around the President-elect and dignitaries on a raised platform—had already begun. One particularly pleased lobbyist described spending hours on Friday trying to secure a spot up there for the CEO of his company. Finally, late in the evening, word came: A Senator had secured the CEO a seat. "At times like these, little things matter," said the lobbyist, obviously relieved.