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President Obama, born in Hawaii, raised in Indonesia and dubbed by some "the first Asian American president," looks to be embracing that label with an exclusive, $40,000-a-head Bay Area business roundtable for Asian American and Pacific Islander supporters Thursday.The morning event at the boutique Garden Court Hotel in Palo Alto is not only a chance for Team Obama to pick up a lot of cash, but it will also provide an exclusive group of fewer than two dozen Silicon Valley power players the opportunity to bend the president's ear on key issues such as immigration, trade policy and education.With just over five months until what's expected to be a razor-close election, the Obama campaign's ethnic-centered fundraiser in California - home to the nation's second-largest group of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders - puts a sharp focus on a key demographic expected to vote in record numbers in November.Both Republican and Democratic campaigns are "trying to find a community of interest that might be moved - and one of the unturned stones has been the Asian community," says Vincent Pan, executive director of the San Francisco group Chinese for Affirmative Action.Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/05/21/MN6N1OL6VB.DTL&ao=all#ixzz1xGXwIKiD
