Nancy Pelosi’s plan: Wine, dine big donors

And Pelosi’s staff notes that her California session will involve more than just schmoozing with the wealthy and well-connected. The speaker will lead policy discussions on health care, energy reform and the economy, among other topics. Scheduled to speak are Obama adviser David Axelrod, CNN commentator and former Clinton adviser James Carville and Mark Zandi, an economic adviser to Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign who has been providing advice to the Obama White House.

More than a dozen other House Democrats will be in attendance, too, including Massachusetts Rep. Ed Markey, a key player on the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee; Education and Labor Committee Chairman George Miller of California, Pelosi’s closest ally in the House; Xavier Becerra of California, vice chairman of the Democratic Caucus; and Joseph Crowley of New York and Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, two up-and-coming Democrats who have previously found themselves in Pelosi’s doghouse but are moving to get back into her good graces.
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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi moves in a rarefied world of high society and high-level politics — and nothing underscores that fact quite like her plans for the August recess.

Pelosi will spend next weekend quietly tending to top party donors and political allies at a series of private events in Northern California.

The two-day “issues conference” starts next Friday night with a dinner for roughly 170 guests on the back lawn of Pelosi’s multimillion-dollar home in the fashionable Pacific Heights neighborhood in San Francisco.

The following day, Pelosi will shepherd her guests to a Napa Valley winery with buildings designed by world-famous architect Frank Gehry; the speaker and her husband, investor Paul Pelosi, own a nearby vineyard worth between $5 million and $25 million, according to her annual financial disclosure report.

There’s nothing unusual about leaders using recess to fund- and friend-raise. Before leaving town last week, House Minority Whip Eric Cantor raked in $1.1 million for fellow Republicans at a lobbyist-heavy fundraiser on Capitol Hill.