DNC rides Obama coattails
National panel's fund-raising rises with candidate's
Barack Obama not only revived his own powerhouse money machine after clinching his party's presidential nomination last month, he jump-started the sputtering fund-raising apparatus of the Democratic National Committee.
That could be bad news for Republican rival John McCain, who is banking on a hefty advantage in national GOP money to help offset Obama's superiority in the money fight.
Obama's campaign reaped $52 million in donations last month, his campaign announced yesterday, up from about $22 million in May and the second highest monthly total for any presidential candidate in history, after the $55.4 million he collected in February as he began to gain control of the nomination fight against Hillary Clinton.
His June haul was about $30 million more than McCain, even though the roughly $22 million that McCain collected marked the Republican's best month of the entire campaign.
The Democratic National Committee, which had raised an average of $5.4 million per month during the first five months of 2008, reported taking in $22.4 million in June, after Obama became the presumptive nominee on June 3 and began joint fund-raising efforts with the party.
Obama's campaign reported $72 million cash on hand as of June 30; the DNC $20.3 million. That's a combined $92.3 million, nearly wiping out the Republicans' $38 million advantage the previous month.
At the end of June, McCain's campaign said it had $26.7 million in the bank; the Republican National Committee said it had about $68.7 million on hand, or more than $95 million in combined accounts.
An edge for the RNC is critical for McCain, who says he will take the public grant of $84.1 million to wage his general election campaign. That will limit McCain's spending to about $10 million a week between the time he is formally nominated on Sept. 4 in St. Paul, and the Nov. 4 election.
The RNC hopes to augment McCain campaign spending with about $120 million in party funds for advertising and other support.
Obama is the first presidential candidate to forgo public funding in a general campaign since the system started in 1976 after post-Watergate reforms. The Illinois Democrat has taken heat for an about-face on the issue - he had said in the past he would take public funds if his Republican opponent did the same.
And without the benefit of public money, Obama is banking on continued record-shattering fund-raising through Nov. 4, particularly from an unprecedented Internet-driven effort among small-dollar donors.
Obama campaign manager David Plouffe, in an e-mail to supporters yesterday seeking more $25 donations, said that "hundreds of thousands" contributed last month, including many first-time donors. The average contribution was $68, he said.
Through the end of June, Obama's campaign had raised a total of about $340 million, about 2 1/2 times McCain's total of about $132 million.
Obama will have to maintain a $50 million-a-month pace to reach the campaign's reported goal of about $300 million to spend for the general election.
"I know this isn't the first time we've asked you for money, and it won't be the last," Plouffe said in the e-mail. "We have developed a strategy - a very aggressive strategy - that will only work if our millions of supporters continue to contribute their time and their money."
McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis, in a conference call with reporters last week, said the Obama campaign's heavy spending will require him to raise $10 million more per month than McCain.
Obama's payroll and overhead costs are significantly more than McCain's.
During the first six months of 2008, Obama spent an average of about $32.3 million per month, most of it while still dueling Clinton for the nomination.
McCain's campaign spent about $13 million a month and wrapped up the nomination in early March.
In June, however, it appears McCain's campaign spent several million dollars more than Obama, based on the campaigns' announcements about fund-raising and cash on hand.
Davis last week told reporters that the McCain campaign had outspent Obama's by $10 million over the prior two months on television advertising.
