Obama raised $60 million May: Best fund-raisers at Vicki Heyman's tonight

WASHINGTON–The Obama team’s National Finance Committee, holding its quarterly meeting in Chicago, is being hosted tonight at the home of Vicki Heyman and her husband Bruce, a Goldman Sachs managing director.

The high end bundlers–who use their personal networks to raise mega cash for Obama’s re-election– are huddling at events organized from the Obama Chicago headquarters as the Obama campaign released the May fund-raising numbers: $60 million from a joint drive between Obama for America and the Democratic National Committee and other entities. That’s a boost from $43.6 million in April and $53 million in March.

The Obama team raised $746 million for the 2008 presidential race. So far for the 2012 cycle, the joint efforts have raised about $460 million.

Vicki Heyman, along with Ariel Investments founder John Rogers and real estate mogul Neil Bluhm are the Illinois Obama finance co-chairs. Rogers had that role in 2008–along with Jim Crown–whose sister Susan–is a leading Mitt Romney fund-raiser.

The Obama team always likes to emphasize small dollar donations–not the $40,000-per-person dinners President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle headline– as they did Thursday morning in a series of Twitter messages sent via @BarackObama.

“More than 572,000 people donated to #Obama2012 in May–and more than 147,000 of them were giving for the first time.”

And this: “98% of the donations the campaign received in May were less than $250, and the average donation was $54.94.”

That other two percent, however, represents an enormous amount of campaign cash.

Mitt Romney’s campaign refuses to disclose the name of his bundlers beyond the tiny legal minimum and refuses to provide details of when and where he appears for fund-raising events.