Obama shatters records with $86M haul

[AK Forty Seven]

Obama shatters records with $86M haul




President Barack Obama has shattered first quarter fundraising records for a White House incumbent by raising $86 million for the first quarter – dwarfing the 2012 GOP field’s total take and breezing past his own target of $60 million.

The shock-and-awe showing was announced by Obama 2012 Campaign Manager Jim Messina, wearing his signature blue dress shirt sans tie, in a web video blasted to supporters in the pre-dawn hours on Wednesday, two days before the 15,000-page combined Obama for America and Democratic National Committee report is due to go up on a government web site.

Earlier this month, Democratic fundraising sources close to the campaign told POLITICO that Obama would easily achieve his goal of besting former President George W. Bush’s combined take of $50.1 million at the same point in the 2004 election cycle.

The total amount Obama raised in the first three months of 2011 also amounted to more than twice the $35 million raised collectively by the announced field of Republican presidential candidates.
“It’s a monumental achievement,” Messina said.

Messina touted the campaign’s commitment to grassroots organizing, and the fact that the average donation was $69 – lower even than the 2008 average contribution. Obama’s campaign organization had come under fire from some on the left who accused them of focusing too heavily on Democratic money players.

The former deputy White House Chief of Staff, who spent much of the spring barnstorming around the country to stoke enthusiasm among big-dollar donors, didn’t immediately provide details on how much cash was raised from contributions above $250. Those will be itemized on the Obama Victory Fund report due to be posted by the Federal Election Commission on Friday.

So far, 552,462 people have contributed to the joint committee, a figure Messina described as “more grassroots support at this point in the process than any campaign in political history.”

Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0711/58861.html#ixzz1RzU2vNyo

 

[bugscoe]

Obama is shattering a whole slew of records.

 

[Lucrum]

Quote from bugscoe:

Obama is shattering a whole slew of records.

All of them bad, including this one.

 

[Artful D0dger]

Well considering how much money he gave all those corporate sponsors, and indebted Americans for generations to come to give them billions I would expect them to throw money at him...

 

[bugscoe]

Quote from Lucrum:

All of them bad, including this one.

Like this one:

 

[bugscoe]

and now for the real story:

Alternative Headline: Obama 2012 Fundraising Behind 2008 Pace
July 13, 2011 7:16 A.M.
By Jim Geraghty

You’ll recall that at the end of last month, I wasn’t quite sure that Obama’s fundraising was as bad as some suggested.

From a Jolt:

Campaign officials revealed during the last week that they have set a target of raising $60 million for the quarter from at least 450,000 donors. But even $60 million would not seem to be a very ambitious goal for Obama. He raised the same amount during the second quarter of 2007, just after he announced his 2008 campaign.”

To match the $750 million or so he raised in 2008, one would expect Obama to average closer to $100 million per quarter for the next seven quarters, no? And to meet the much-hyped $1 billion number, Obama would have to perform well beyond that.

Part of me always looks warily at these sorts of leading indicators, but we will know fairly soon if there’s a reason that the Obama team is emphasizing that they don’t measure their capability to successfully raise money by that traditional metric of money raised.

Today the number is $86 million, an impressive sum by any measure. But it’s worth remembering, as Nathan Wurtzel notes, Obama’s total includes fundraising he did for the Democratic National Committee, as opposed to GOP candidates’ totals, which are amounts raised solely for their campaign.

To offer a more accurate comparison, you would have to toss in the totals for the RNC, which raised $6 million in April and $6 million in May. The RNC’s June total is not yet known.

Is Obama ahead in fundraising? Yes, and probably by quite a bit. But the comparison is not Obama and the DNC’s $86 million against Romney’s $18.3 million. The comparison is Obama and the DNC’s $86 million against Romney [or your preferred candidate] + $12 million for the RNC in April and May + the RNC’s June total. Will Obama still be comfortably ahead? Of course. And he probably should be, considering how he’s an incumbent president who has hit the fundraising trail with a fast and furious pace.

But again, to match his $750 million from the 2008 cycle, Obama would need to average $107 million for seven quarters. Obviously, hit is possible that Obama can make up ground in the next few quarters. But to hit that hyped $1 billion number, Obama would need to raise a bit more than $142 million per quarter. As impressive as the $86 million figure is, it’s below those markers.

And that’s not even getting into the millions that will be spent by outside groups.

UPDATE: Obama’s fundraising total for just his campaign: $47 million. So he has raised about two and a half times what Romney raised.

Note that at this point in 2003, George W. Bush had raised $49.5 million, or about $58.5 million in today’s money $35 million, or about $41.3 million. (I made an error in using Bush’s following quarter’s figure; Bush raised the $49.5 million from July to September of 2003.)

But that’s really not a fair comparison, and I hope Democrats will agree that Bush’s fundraising occurred during a time of relative economic prosperity, while Obama has been forced to raise cash in an economy where almost every American is worse off than they were three years ago, and has much less money to donate to their preferred cause.

ANOTHER UPDATE: The Obama campaign declares 98 percent of their donations were for $250 or less, and that the average was $69.

Note that under FEC rules, the Obama campaign is not required to collect information on donors of less than $200; The commission asks campaigns to report any donor whose cumulative contributions have exceeded $200.