The New York Times
Friday 01 February 2008
As he was winning contests in Iowa and South Carolina, Senator Barack Obama raised $32 million in January for his presidential bid, tapping 170,000 new contributors to rake in nearly double the highest previous one-month total for any candidate in this election cycle.
This extraordinary influx of cash comes at a critical time, and is helping to fuel the Obama campaign's nationwide advertising blitz and get-out-the-vote effort as it competes in the 22 states holding nominating contests on Tuesday, including expensive ones like California and New York.
The money was mostly collected from small donors, who the campaign is hoping will continue to give in coming months and who represent an increasingly formidable force in presidential fund-raising. By contrast, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has relied more on a smaller pool of big-money donors, many of whom have already given the maximum allowable under the law.
The $32 million is significant because no candidate who has not yet secured the party nomination has raised this amount in a single month. In March 2004, Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, raised $44 million, but that was after it was clear he would be the nominee. In this election cycle, the highest monthly take previously was the $17 million raised by Mrs. Clinton, of New York, last March.
"This is astonishing, and it may be Obama's secret weapon," said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks campaign spending. "He has more small donors that he can squeeze for more donations, fewer donors who have maxed out and more donors in general."
The Clinton campaign had not yet released fund-raising totals for January.
For all of 2007, Mrs. Clinton raised $118 million, and Mr. Obama $103 million. But a greater share of Mrs. Clinton's money than Mr. Obama's is directed to the general election, as many of her donors have reached the maximum they can give to her primary campaign.
The one-month total for Mr. Obama, of Illinois, also shows the growing power of the Internet as a fund-raising tool. Veteran fund-raisers said it would have been impossible for the campaign to raise that sum by relying solely on well-heeled donors and "bundlers," donors who tap networks of acquaintances for support.
"When you get $32 million in one month, it is not because you have bundlers working," said Orin Kramer, a New York financier and Obama fund-raiser. "It is because you have an avalanche of small donors operating online. It's a revolution. People like me don't achieve those kinds of numbers."
What is particularly surprising is that this one-month total, which the campaign was eager to preview on Thursday, is coming after a year of intense fund-raising by Democratic candidates, who have far outraised their Republican counterparts. But with the race going beyond the Feb. 5 contests, the need for cash by the Clinton and Obama campaigns is expected only to increase.
"Most money is usually raised at the beginning, when the strongest supporters quickly come up with the most," said Jan Baran, a campaign finance lawyer in Washington who advises Republicans.
On the Republican side, the candidate filings show other struggles. That of Senator John McCain of Arizona shows that his finances were perilously thin as the year ended and before he scored a major victory in the New Hampshire primary, which reinvigorated fund-raising efforts.
For the year, Mr. McCain raised $42.1 million, with $10 million of that coming in during the fourth quarter; he ended the year with $2.9 million in cash on hand. The McCain campaign said Thursday that it raised $7 million in the first three weeks of 2008.
But Mr. McCain also ended the year with debts of $4.5 million.
His chief opponent, Mitt Romney, raised more than twice as much, $90 million, in 2007. But Mr. Romney, who has a personal net worth estimated at up to $250 million, lent his own campaign $35 million. His campaign ended the year with only $2.4 million in cash on hand, an indication of the campaign's high spending rate.
Mike Huckabee, former governor of Arkansas, who had been running a shoestring campaign, reported raising $9 million in 2007, with $6.6 million of that raised in the fourth quarter. The money began to flow as his campaign gained traction in Iowa, where he won the Republican caucuses on Jan. 3. Mr. Huckabee ended 2007 with $1.9 million in cash on hand. He had not released figures for January.
By contrast, Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor, who withdrew from the race Wednesday and threw his support to Mr. McCain, had robust fund-raising through 2007, even as his political fortunes fell. He reported having $12.8 million in cash on hand at the end of the year, having raised $14.4 million in the fourth quarter and $61.4 million for the year. He withdrew after losing the Florida primary.
Wilbur Ross, a New York financier and Giuliani fund-raiser, said Giuliani donors had been "getting a lot of phone calls" from the McCain camp. Many Giuliani backers withheld donations to Mr. McCain out of courtesy until Mr. Giuliani officially withdrew. In addition, Mr. Ross said some Giuliani money might well go to Mr. Romney, former governor of Massachusetts.
The Romney campaign had not yet filed its fund-raising data for the year.
Mr. Obama's fund-raising has also taken a page recently from the Ron Paul, a Republican candidate who has an interactive fund-raising clock on his Web site that has excited donors and brought him tens of millions of dollars.
The Obama campaign boasts of having 650,000 contributors over all and said that the strength of the campaign's recent fund-raising drive would sustain Mr. Obama in the primary battles ahead.
"If this ends up going through March and April, we think we're going to have the resources necessary to conduct vigorous campaigns in every state," said David Plouffe, the Obama campaign's manager.
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