Vilsack ends his run for president

WASHINGTON -- The unprecedented fund - raising pressure on presidential candidates forced a Democratic hopeful out of the 2008 presidential race yesterday, fueling worries that the high price of admission to the campaign is weeding out contenders before they have a chance to make their pitches to voters.

The decision yesterday by Tom Vilsack , former governor of Iowa, to withdraw from the fight for the Democratic nomination -- nearly a year before a primary is held -- underscored the importance of money in a campaign that is shaping up as the most expensive in history. And political officials fear that the push to move some big-state primaries farther up the political schedule will only make it harder for lesser-known contenders to run for the Oval Office.

"The field of candidates vying for the Democratic nomination shrunk yet again today with Governor Tom Vilsack's departure," but the national party has not been able to stop state efforts to move up their primaries, said Kathy Sullivan , chairwoman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party. "How many qualified and dynamic leaders do we have to lose in this race before something is done?" she said.

Vilsack became the fifth would-be candidate to withdraw from the race for the White House, following Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana, Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, and Mark R. Warner , former Virginia governor , all Democrats, as well as Bill Frist of Tennessee, a former Senate majority leader and a Republican. The intense fund - raising pressure has affected all the candidates, but Vilsack was blunt yesterday in blaming money for his abandoned campaign.

"I ran up against something where good ideas, great effort, [and] lots of hard work was simply not enough," a somber-looking Vilsack said at a news conference in Des Moines. "It is ultimately about money. And the reality is that we were unable to raise the resources that would have allowed us to expand our great organization in Iowa and the beginnings of our organization in New Hampshire and to other states."

Orphaned as a small child, Vilsack became a lawyer, state legislator, and in 1998, the first Democratic governor in Iowa in 32 years.

He was considered a long shot for the nomination, dwarfed by better-known candidates such as Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Barack Obama of Illinois and former senator John Edwards of North Carolina .

But the need to raise tens of millions of dollars just to enter the race means "second-tier" candidates might not get a chance to compete at all, political analysts said.

"We have a process now where the nomination might be over by the second week of February [2008], as opposed to 15 years ago, when we might be in the final push for New Hampshire" at that stage, said Anthony Corrado , a campaign finance specialist at Colby College in Maine. "What it has done is further intensified the money primary," forcing out lesser-known candidates who might have been able to compete in earlier campaign years, he said.

Mike Huckabee -- a former Arkansas governor who is among the lesser-known competitors in the race for the GOP nomination -- has lamented the heavy focus on money, noting that some political analysts have said a candidate will need to raise at least $100 million to be taken seriously.

"If all it's going to be about is raising money, let's put the whole thing on eBay," Huckabee told voters in Manchester , N.H., earlier this month. "If anyone breaks the $100 million [mark] before the first vote is even cast, you do not want that guy handling the federal Treasury."

Consumer activist and former presidential candidate Ralph Nader denounced the role of big money in politics, saying "it's all about crushing dissent" from lower-profile or third-party candidates.

"First, it was a million [dollars]. Then it was $10 million. Now it's $100 million," Nader said on CNN. "Our democracy is being run into the ground."

In previous campaigns, candidates could spend the year before the primaries laying out a policy agenda and holding small, low-budget events where voters could ask candidates direct questions .

Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter -- both relatively unknown Democratic governors when their presidential races started -- used that time to build grass - roots support and draw the donations they needed to run successful national campaigns.

But this year, the process has accelerated dramatically, with more than a dozen major candidates in both parties vying for a finite amount of cash and a finite number of supporters , said Andrew Smith , a pollster at the University of New Hampshire.

Efforts to move up the primaries in several large states -- including California and Florida, where statewide advertising is expensive -- mean candidates have less time to raise the money they'll need to compete, Smith said.

The Democratic National Committee is trying to discourage the states' ambition to move up their primaries, offering extra delegates at the national convention if they stay where they are on the schedule.

But the states have the power to set their own primary dates; the national party can not stop them.

Vilsack said he has not decided whom to endorse among the eight Democrats pursuing a run for the White House.

The former governor was lagging in opinion polls -- he had attracted about 1 percent of Democratic support in New Hampshire, but Smith said -- Vilsack's endorsement is valuable because his home state holds the first presidential caucuses.

Other Democratic presidential candidates lauded Vilsack, saying the mild-mannered Midwesterner had made an important contribution to the campaign dialogue.

Obama -- whose campaign feuded with Clinton's over critical comments that movie mogul David Geffen made about the New York senator after he hosted an Obama fund-raiser-- praised Vilsack while subtly tweaking Clinton about the spat and her refusal to renounce her 2002 vote authorizing force in Iraq.

"Tom brings a badly needed sense of honor and decency to our politics and a passionate advocacy for an end to the war in Iraq," Obama said in a statement. " I hope he will continue to speak out in the months and years to come, as his is an important and valued voice."