The official Q3 reports are being filed. I will update this post with whatever interesting nuggets I find.
- Clinton has more cash on hand than Obama.
By $3 Million for the primary totaling $35 to Obama’s $32. Clinton has has $15 million cash on hand for a general election.
- Both are way ahead of Rudy Giuliani who has $11.6 million in the bank.
- Romney spent $21 million twice what he earned this quarter
John Edwards has accepted public funding for his campaign, a sign that Q3 won’t be any better than the first two fundraising quarters for the Edwards camp.
The campaign is defending the decision continuing their rhetoric of money corrupting politics but it is hard to deny that this will be seen as Edwards not being able to mount an effective fundraising campaign while attacking lobbyists, corporate donors and monied interests.
Marc Ambinder points to a damning quote from Edwards campaign advisor Joe Trippi who said in 2003 while working on Dean for America:
“This campaign believes that any Democratic campaign that opted into the matching-funds system has given up on the general election.
ABC News is reporting that the The National Republican Congressional Committee which raises money to fund GOP House races is nearly bankrupt. With $1.6 million cash on hand but over $4 million in debts the committee is trailing its Democratic counterpart which has $22.1 million.
The news is turning back to fundraising. Two new articles, one from Politico looking at how the Obama campaign is courting and encouraging small donors, including small donor bundling, and one from NewsDay talking about how overall fundraising has slowed for the Democratic candidates.
The thing to remember is that we should expect fundraising to slow at this point as donors have been tapped out. What is AMAZING is that even if both Clinton and Obama pull in under 20 million each that is a huge amount that blows away the Republicans and really is breaking all-time records.
As campaign contributions pour in to the 2008 presidential race, employees at some of the nation’s largest banks and investment firms are deciding more often than not to write out big checks to Democratic candidates.
Workers at Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Lehman Brothers and elsewhere are putting their cash behind Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards over the Republican front-runners, according to an analysis of Federal Election Commission filings by ABC News.
At Goldman Sachs, the largest of the firms, employees donated $542,000 to the top three Democrats and the top three Republicans from Jan. 1 through June 30.
More than 63 percent of those dollars went to Democrats, with Obama getting the bulk of that cash  $184,750, according to the ABC analysis.
Meanwhile Dems have received $100 Million more in campaign contributions than Republicans.
The top Republican presidential candidates spent more than their Democratic counterparts in the first six months of the year, even though the Republican contenders raised less money, the latest campaign-finance reports show.
Republicans Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and John McCain outspent Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards by more than $20 million, a USA TODAY analysis found. The three Republicans lag the top Democrats in total receipts by $40 million and have $61 million less in the bank.
Online donations are emerging as a cornerstone of the fund-raising efforts of Senator Barack Obama and former Senator John Edwards, who have raised roughly a third of their money through Internet contributions, mostly in small-dollar amounts. Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has been aggressive online as well. Their efforts have paid off with a rapidly growing army of small donors, many of whom have demonstrated a willingness to give again and again.
Newly released data show that for the first six months of the year, the three leading contenders for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, Mr. Obama of Illinois, Mr. Edwards of North Carolina, and Mrs. Clinton of New York, raised more than $28 million online, a figure that does not include second-quarter results from Mrs. Clinton, whose campaign declined to release them. In contrast, the three top Republican candidates, Rudolph W. Giuliani, Senator John McCain and Mitt Romney, raised about $14 million over the Internet.
According to reports Mitt Romney raised $14 million putting $6.5 million of his own money into the race (totaling $20.5 Million for Q2 in total receipts). He has about $12 million cash on hand or ten times his republican rival John McCain. Also Rudy Giuliani has reportedly raised $15 million ($2 Million for the primary)
To be honest this is a pretty poor showing for all Republicans in Quarter 2 compared to the dueling rivals of Barack Obama & Hillary Clinton who have each raised over $25 million in Q2 alone. It makes me wonder if Republican donors just aren’t turning out for the candidates on hand OR if they have switched to Democratic candidates. Either that or there is just a massive new force of donors on the Democratic side and not Republicans.
You know more than the fact that Barack Obama out-raised Sen. Clinton by a few million dollars, which is quite a feat don’t get me wrong, I am still amazed this quarter as I was last quarter that Democrats are raising so much money. Just a few years ago the conventional wisdom was that Dems could never got the support like Republicans saw with direct-mail and through talk radio, not to mention business support. Here we are since 2004 when Dems first started raking in the big cash and they now seem to be beating out the Republican candidates by an enormous amount.
Now I do feel like come general election time Republicans will rally their base and get behind one candidate and money will be raised to compete. With that said if the right combination of dems got together they could possibly launch a real assault on Republicans. A Clinton/Obama candidacy seems unlikely and come primary time when they get ruff with each other it might well be ruled out. Imagine though the massive amount of money that could be raised with the two. It could really be a sight to see.
In the end if I were a Republican strategist I would be starting to worry that something isn’t right ‘out-there’ and I would have to start thinking it is time to really move as far away from the last six years.
The other dayMSNBC posted a list of journalists who had given money to support political campaigns and organizations, often against their employers policies. Since that article at least three of those individuals have been fired. From a followup at MSNBC:
The TV reporter in Omaha who posted a photo of herself on Facebook.com with a congressional candidate, urging her friends to vote for him, is no longer working at the station.
Also out: an editorial cartoonist who said he didn’t “give a rat’s ass” about his newspaper’s policy on campaign contributions by journalists.
And one newspaper has dropped the syndicated column “The Ethicist” by New York Times writer Randy Cohen because of his donation to MoveOn.org, which he said he had thought of as “nonpartisan.”
Though I always hate seeing people lose their jobs this is probably the right message for other journalists and a chance for editors & producers to start being more strict about their policies.
