Fundraising Reflects Competitive Presidential Race
The first-quarter fundraising reports from the 2008 presidential campaigns changed the race significantly, taking away any remaining aura of inevitability from the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and John McCain and making Barack Obama and Mitt Romney look much more viable than they did even a few weeks ago. A look at what the fundraising reports mean for the presidential frontrunners:
The Democrats
Barack Obama: With nearly $26 million raised in the first quarter, about as much as Hillary Clinton collected in individual contributions, the first term Illinois senator exceeded expectations and is on track to rake in $100 million by the '08 Iowa caucus. The Clinton campaign raised eyebrows earlier this year when it said it was expecting to raise that much by the Iowa caucus. By many measures, Obama outperformed Clinton in the first quarter. Obama signed up more donors–104,000, including 50,000 online donors, compared with 60,000 total donors for Clinton. Almost all of Obama's money is for the primary, while roughly $7 million of Clinton's money is off limits till the general election, if she makes it that far. And while nearly half of Obama's funds came from contributors who gave the maximum $2,300, which means those donors are now tapped out through the primary, half of Clinton's money came from maxed-out donors
Hillary Clinton: The fact that the junior senator from New York has fewer donors and raised less for the primary than Obama has suddenly made her very vulnerable. Still, the Clinton campaign emphasized that, with the $10 million she rolled over from her '06 Senate reelection fund, she shattered the previous record for first quarter presidential fundraising. But with the majority of Clinton's donors already maxed out for the primary cycle, she now needs to show she can draw new donors into the field and that she can get her smaller donors to keep shelling out.
John Edwards: When he ran for president in 2004, the former North Carolina senator brought in more money than any other candidate in the first quarter of '03 by collecting $7.4 million. In this quarter, he nearly doubled that amount, to $14 million, but placed a distant third in the Democratic fundraising primary. The Edwards camp says it is following a different route to the presidential nomination than Clinton and Obama, betting everything on strong finishes in the early Iowa and Nevada caucuses to give its campaign the momentum to make it through the primaries. The question is whether that route is still open in what is expected to be the first billion-dollar presidential race.
The Republicans
Mitt Romney: Barack Obama's stellar first-quarter performance has been grabbing all the headlines, but the former Massachusetts Governor pulled off what is perhaps a bigger coup on the Republican ticket: coming in first in the money primary despite relatively low name identification–and despite facing two competitors with near universal name ID. Romney has already burned through half of the $23.4 million, but it takes capital to build a national organization from scratch. While his donor list of 32,000, less than a third of the number Obama has, illustrates a huge Democratic advantage in grassroots fundraising intensity, Romney's fundraising report hints at some new Republican fundraising markets. After California, the two states that gave most to Romney were the typically liberal Massachusetts, where Romney was a one- term governor, and Utah, the home base of Romney's Mormon church.
John McCain: As if his ties to Washington and the Iraq war weren't weighing the Arizona senator down enough in his second White House bid, the first-quarter fundraising reports brought more news. He has raised just $13.7 million, even though he's been eyeing a presidential run since losing to George W. Bush in the 2000 primaries. Even worse, McCain's already burned through two thirds of his war chest. The McCain camp has recently rejiggered its finance team, eliminated some staff positions, and renegotiated consultant contracts, but if his second quarter performance doesn't improve considerably, he will have gone from front runner to long shot in the course of just a few months.
Rudy Giuliani: The former New York mayor's exploratory committee didn't get up and running until mid-February, which is why the $14.8 million he raised in the first quarter didn't draw more criticism from the press and the pundits. But now that the Giuliani machine is full steam ahead, with some very big names attached to it, expectations for the second quarter will be much, much higher.
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