Clark aides say recent donations net $10.4m, matching funds

After relentless fund-raising in his late-entry presidential campaign, retired Army general Wesley K. Clark raised between $10.4 million and $11.1 million in the final quarter of 2003 and will be eligible for up to $6 million in federal matching funds, aides said, making him competitive with other well-financed candidates in the final primary push.

Those figures mean Clark, who raised $3.5 million in the third quarter, will have taken in $20 million last year, including matching funds. That represents about half of the $40 million raised last year by former Vermont governor Howard Dean, the Democratic fund-raising leader, who opted to forgo matching funds, meaning he may exceed state spending caps.

Dean's campaign said it raised $15 million in the final quarter of 2004, after a last-day online fund-raising drive of $415,000.

The figures mark a strong entry for Clark, who has never run for office before and didn't enter the campaign until mid-September. And while some candidates have struggled to maintain fund-raising momentum -- Senator John F. Kerry, who recently loaned $6.4 million to his campaign, raised only $2.5 million in the fourth quarter -- Clark's aides say his fund-raising pace has been increasing.

They expect Clark to raise another $4 million in January, based on scheduled events, and say he will likely borrow against the full amount of his matching funds.

"What the fund-raising figures show is that there are only two candidates who have the resources to win the nomination, and that is Howard Dean and Wesley Clark" said Clark strategist Chris Lehane, citing both candidates' fund-raising success and showings in early polls. "The empirical data fit the assertion that this has boiled down to a two-person race."

None of the Democratic candidates are expected to approach the fund-raising of the Bush-Cheney campaign, which reportedly has taken in as much as $120 million.

Clark aides said he will probably have between $4 million and $5 million on hand at the start of the year, and the $6 million in matching funds would be more than any other candidate adhering to spending limits.

Under federal campaign finance laws, candidates who adhere to an overall $45 million spending cap are eligible for matching funds for the first $250 they receive from each donor. Clark should receive a $3.7 million match for his earnings through November, and a $2 million to $2.3 million match for his December earnings, aides said.

And unlike Dean, who has been spending heavily in both Iowa and New Hampshire, Clark is not competing in the Iowa caucuses, concentrating instead on the Jan. 27 New Hampshire primary and the seven primaries on Feb. 3. Aides said Clark has already paid for much of his January television advertising in New Hampshire, and his campaign expects to reach the spending caps in New Hampshire. He is also airing ads in South Carolina, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arizona, and North Dakota, and plans to advertise soon in Virginia and Wisconsin.

Aides say they expect Clark will be able to spend $25 million through Feb. 3.

Dean aides have not said how much cash they have on hand.

Since his campaign announcement, Clark has worked to raise money at a rapid pace, holding fund-raisers in nearly every city he visits, and flying to places like West Palm Beach, Fla., for quick fund-raising trips. Aides say his traditional fund-raisers have taken in an average of $50,000 apiece in small markets, and $250,000 apiece in larger markets, such as New York and Los Angeles.

Aides said Clark has also raised about $4 million on the Internet, where a grass-roots drive to draft him into the race evolved into a network of weblogs that has tried, with some success, to capture the energy of Dean's Internet presence.

A late-December drive to raise $1 million online by the end of the quarter met its goal, with an average donation of $129 per person. News coverage also served as a catalyst for some small online fund-raising drives; one Georgia-based group of Clark supporters raised about $20,000 in the hours after Clark was captured on C-SPAN using a four-letter word to describe how he would counter any rival who challenged his patriotism, and the campaign picked up $20,000 in the hours after it issued a harshly worded statement about a TV appearance by Tom DeLay, the Republican House majority leader.Aides said another major source of money has been traditional Democratic fund-raisers who watched Clark stumble in the early days of his campaign, but opened their wallets when they saw him improving in appearances and gaining traction in the polls. Clark plans to spend most of the month of January in New Hampshire, punctuated by several visits to South Carolina and one feverish swing through several Southeastern states, Wisconsin, and New York. Aides say that next week, he will announce a domestic policy initiative that will serve as the focus of some future advertising, and he will spend some time late in the month focusing attention on some of President Bush's terminology, such as "Bring it on" and "Dead or alive."

The Clark campaign also plans some canvassing drives in New Hampshire and other early primary states, along with a letter-writing campaign to primary voters.