Obama and the DNC made a miscalculation when Obama became the first presidential candidate in over three decades to forego public financing. Looks as though John McCain is the new cash cow.
The Washington Post reports [all emphasis mine]:
Republican presidential candidate John McCain raised more than $22 million in June, his best fundraising performance of the year, and ended the month with nearly $27 million cash on hand.
Campaign manager Rick Davis said Thursday that McCain and the national Republican Party together entered July with about $95 million in the bank. The Republican National Committee, which has been raising money jointly with McCain, collected nearly $26 million in June and had nearly $69 million on hand, officials said.
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In announcing McCain’s fundraising, Davis portrayed the campaign’s financial position as far brighter than ever before. He said the joint RNC-McCain fundraising through direct mail is now exceeding President Bush’s direct mail fundraising in 2004.
“We will have significant resources to prosecute a campaign that is very robust,” Davis said.
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Davis said McCain and the RNC expect to raise a combined $95 million by the end of August. After that, Davis predicted the combined party and public money available to advance McCain’s campaign in the fall would total about $210 million.
Well, McCain is certainly in good shape, indeed, doing better than ever. How about Obama and the DNC…?
Obama has not revealed his June fundraising.
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Obama’s campaign officials would not discuss their finances. But spokesman Bill Burton noted that Obama has more than 1.7 million donors and that, unlike Obama, McCain is getting help raising money from federal lobbyists.
“We … are simply not surprised that John McCain and President Bush have been able to raise millions of dollars for the McCain campaign last month, much of it from Washington lobbyists,” Burton said.
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Obama has proved to be a prodigious fundraiser, but the Democratic National Committee has had far less cash on hand than its Republican counterpart. At the end of May, the RNC had $53 million cash on hand to the DNC’s $4 million.
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Obama has broken records in fundraising. He had raised $287 million by the end of May, but had only $33 million cash on hand to spend between now and the end of August.
With Obama refusing to disclose June fundraising amounts, and his team milking the “lobbyist” meme and playing the victim (”he’s taking money from lobbyist, so of course he will have more”) things clearly aren’t looking too good for the fundraising king, and they probably won’t be looking up anytime soon. Obama bringing in more money requires that either his current donors pony up more cash (if they aren’t already maxed out) or getting Hillary’s fundraisers to donate to his campaign. The latter is certainly not going well, and it won’t improve unless Obama gives a little ground:
…for some of Clinton’s top supporters, it’s going to take more than just encouragement from the former first lady to get them to open their wallets and hearts to Obama.
Some of Clinton’s fundraisers are pressuring the Obama campaign to support her policy positions — and help pay off her campaign debt.
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With that debt yet to be paid off, some of Clinton’s supporters are balking at the idea of forking over donations for Obama — especially if he does not choose her to be his running mate.
Businesswoman Lynn Forester de Rothschild launched a Web site bringing Clinton supporters together to put the pressure on Obama.
“We are being asked to embrace party unity without the fair representation of Hillary Clinton and her 18 million voters,” she says on her Web site. “Party unity requires bilateral action. We ask Barack Obama and the [Democratic National Committee] to respond.”
De Rothschild is one of the so-called “Hillraisers” — supporters who raised at least $100,000 for Clinton. She’s yet to fork over any cash for Obama, and she doesn’t know if she will.
“I certainly know there are lots of people who are withholding their money,” she said.
Obama and the DNC are in a lot of trouble. The DNC is already well short of the amount needed to fund the Convention. With the DNC’s cash tanks almost at empty, and Obama’s fundraising stalling, they may soon be rethinking that summersault on public financing.
