HispanicBusiness

President Obama barnstormed the San Francisco Bay Area on Tuesday, on the ground here for only about 2 hours but collecting at least $1 million at a luncheon fundraiser.

More than a thousand protesters thronged the area around Third and Howard streets hoping to catch the president's eye, but the motorcade came and went from the W Hotel from the east side, offering only a glimpse at best.

Though many causes were represented, the majority of protesters were there either to decry the Keystone XL pipeline -- planned to carry oil from Alberta, Canada's tar sands to refineries as far south as Texas -- or to urge the president to halt federal prosecutors' recent crackdown on California's medical marijuana dispensaries.

"I just hope that Obama heard us," said protester Jan McKim, 63, of San Carlos, who was carrying a "Stop Keystone XL" sign.

Inside, the president addressed 200 contributors; although the minimum ticket price previously was believed to be $7,500, a Democratic fundraising source told a pool reporter Tuesday that the floor was $5,000.

Singer Jack Johnson performed at the event, in keeping with past Obama fundraisers that turned on the star power for top donors.

Obama made a direct appeal for help in the upcoming election, according to a White House pool report of the visit.

"Whether you are an old grizzled veteran or new to the scene, I need your help," he said. The coming election, he said, is "more consequential, more important" to the future of the nation than the last one.

He talked about his jobs bill -- a portion of which is back before the Senate -- and referred to its proposed tax increases on the wealthy by saying the bill was fully paid for "by asking those of us who've been most blessed in this society to do a little bit more." He said his jobs bill would "give the economy the jolt it needs right now." He likened the nation's current hardships to past challenges: the situation after the Great Depression, to the civil rights movement, and going to the moon.

"If we don't work even harder than we did in 2008, then we're going to have a government that tells the American people, 'You're on your own,' " he said. "That's not the America I believe in, it's not the America you believe in. We're going to have to fight for the America that we believe in."

The president answered some questions from the crowd, but the press corps wasn't allowed to hear that.

This was the president's third visit to the Bay Area -- always a lucrative fundraising location for him -- in a little more than six months, and his seventh since taking office; last month, he collected up to $5.5 million at fundraisers in Woodside and Atherton.

The president's fundraising strategy in 2008 relied in part on smaller contributions and grass roots support. His fundraising report for this year's third-quarter showed about 257,000 first-time donors, with the average contribution so far in this election cycle dropping to $91.

Obama left San Francisco for Denver, where he had two more fundraisers scheduled Tuesday as part of his three-state fundraising sweep through the west. The president had two fundraisers in Los Angeles on Monday, including a Latino-oriented event at the home of actors Antonio Banderas and Melanie Griffith, and taped an appearance on NBC's "Tonight Show with Jay Leno" earlier Tuesday.

Although it was mainly conservative tea-partiers who picketed the motorcade route near the president's fundraiser in Woodside last month, neither conservatives nor Obama supporters were evident Tuesday.

Instead, it was an outpouring of progressive outrage and disappointment at a president many of the protesters had once believed would represent their interests.

Keystone XL pipeline opponents, who believe the project enables dirty fossil fuel consumption that's at odds with Obama's green rhetoric, made up most of the crowd.

The next-biggest contingent of protesters were marijuana advocates.

Several organizations plus elected officials such as state Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, D-San Francisco, and San Francisco Supervisor David Campos held a news conference urging the president to respect California's medical marijuana law and order federal prosecutors to back off a crackdown on dispensaries.

The national World Can't Wait organization's Bay Area chapter organized a protest against war and other abuses, and another group came demanding a single-payer health care system. And scattered regularly throughout the crowd were signs declaring protesters as part of "the 99 percent" -- a reference to all but the very richest Americans, and a show of solidarity with the Occupy movements that have sprung up from coast to coast.