Obama: The 500 Million Dollar Man

Via: ABC News

Barack Obama's refusal of public financing for his campaign opens up the possibility for him to outspend John McCain by 3-to-1 or more in the general election. With the possibility of spending perhaps $500 million just in the final two months of the campaign, Obama will be the first major-party candidate to enjoy a spending edge in the general election in more than 30 years. The comparison with the consistently cash-strapped McCain campaign could hardly be more stark.

While McCain, who on Thursday said he will accept public financing, will be limited to spending only $84.1 million between the Republican National Convention and Election Day, Obama will be free to raise and spend unlimited amounts — with advertising specialists and party insiders projecting that he will bring in hundreds of millions of dollars, utilizing and expanding on the most efficient fundraising operation in American political history.

Some party strategists say Obama could use his immense cash advantage to run a national ad campaign akin to marketing drives run by companies like McDonald's and Nike, while simultaneously engaging in targeted, state-level organizing that could leave McCain on the defensive in states that have rarely been competitive in years past.

Yesterday, Obama released his first ad since wrapping up the Democratic nomination, and it hints at the potential scope of ad buys to come. The ad is running in 18 states, including perennial Republican strongholds Alaska, Indiana, Montana, North Carolina, and North Dakota, as well as classic swing states Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

"If the ad buy looks like this in October, this election's over," said Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "He's competing in red states, and he doesn't even feel he needs to advertise in blue states."

Obama Opts Out of Public Financing

In this video message to supporters, Barack Obama announced today that he is opting out of the public financing system, forgoing "more than $80 million in public funds" for the more bountiful loot that could await him later and allow him greater reach with the 50 state strategy. Obama becomes the first modern presidential candidate to run a race solely on the back of private funds.

Barack Obama is the choice of free-agent donors

From the Los Angeles Times:

Campaign donors who previously backed also-ran Democratic candidates have adopted Sen. Barack Obama as their second choice, preferring Obama by a ratio of nearly 3 to 1 over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and giving him twice as much money.

Obama has collected more than $2 million to Clinton's $900,000 from donors who once backed former Sen. John Edwards and other Democrats who have dropped out, a Times analysis of Federal Election Commission records shows.

Obama's success at attracting the donors of the also-ran Democrats underscores a phenomenon apparent throughout the Democratic primary: Many Democrats take an ABC or "Anybody but Clinton" view. The Times analysis shows that roughly 3,000 donors to the Democrats who quit the race have switched to Obama, and 1,100 have gone with Clinton. Obama has fared best among Richardson's donors, collecting 73% of the money they gave in February and March. Clinton's best showing was among donors to Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr., though she collected only 40% of the money they gave in February and March, to Obama's 60%.

Two of the former candidates, Richardson and Sen. Christopher J. Dodd, have endorsed Obama. Edwards and Biden are neutral.

By far, the largest source of money for the two remaining candidates came from Edwards' backers -- $1.2 million for Obama and $500,000 for Clinton. The analysis omits most donations of $200 or less, because candidates are not required to itemize small donations.

32,000 Co-signatures to FEC Complaint Against McCain

On April 1st, Joe Sudbay of AmericaBlog and Reverend Lennox Yearwood delivered 32,000 signatures to the FEC, cosigning the complaint filed last Thursday against John McCain and his campaign. It took three reams of paper and 1,400 pages to print it all out:

Big Donors backing Dems

Lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis, the law firm that's home to Whitewater prosecutor Kenneth Starr and Bush administration official Jay Lefkowitz, have given more to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign than to all of the top Republican candidates combined.

Large U.S. firms such as Jones Day and Sidley Austin, which donated more to President George W. Bush in 2000 than to Democratic candidate Al Gore, are giving thousands more to Democratic hopefuls than Republicans. Top Wall Street investment banks and hedge funds are also giving more to Democrats.

Even at Jones Day, the 2,167-lawyer firm that represents the Republican National Committee, attorneys have given 3 1/2 times as much to the three Democratic frontrunners, including $131,333 to Obama. The Cleveland-based firm's lawyers donated more than twice as much to Bush than to Gore in 2000 and slightly more to Bush in 2004.

Overall, lawyers in and out of large firms have given $18.27 million to Democrats Clinton, Obama and John Edwards, compared with $5.75 million to Republicans Rudy Giuliani, John McCain and Mitt Romney. Edwards, a former senator from North Carolina and a trial lawyer, leads the pack, backed mainly by attorneys who sue on behalf of shareholders and individuals.

The donations of big firm lawyers mirror those of the largest Wall Street investment bankers who have also backed Democrats this year. Employees at the top 10 Wall Street investment banks gave more than $1.4 million to Democrats and a little more than $900,000 to Republicans, according to Federal Election Commission filings.

"Firms want to be on the good side of who they think is going to be the incumbent, whether or not that person is good for business," said Bruce MacEwen, a nonpartisan New York legal consultant. "The conventional wisdom is that the Democrats are going to win the White House."

Dem coffers outweighing GOP's

From almost any angle, Republicans are facing a Democratic financial tsunami in 2008. In the first six months of this year, Democratic federal candidates and the party's three national committees raised $381 million compared with the $291 million their counterparts collected. That amounts to a $90 million advantage and means that 57 percent of the total raised by all political candidates and committees has gone to the Democrats:


And that's the good news for Republicans.

When the cash on hand is added up for presidential, House and Senate candidates, as well as the party committees, the picture is even bleaker. Overall, Democrats reported having $314 million in cash compared with the Republicans' $190 million, which means that 62 percent of the political cash is now held in Democratic accounts.

What does that mean at political micro-levels? The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has a 10-1 cash advantage over its Republican adversary, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has a cash advantage that is three times greater than the National Republican Senatorial Committee's take.

The top two Democratic candidates each have nearly as much money in the bank as the combined savings of the entire 2008 Republican field. The 10 Republicans running for president reported a combined total of $36 million cash on hand - Obama has $35 million and Clinton has $33 million available for the primary race.

"I cannot remember a time when the Democrats have had an advantage in the party committees and at the candidate level at the same time," said Michael J. Malbin, executive director of the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute.

Certainly, money alone doesn't win elections. Campaign trails leading to the Oval Office and to the lowly House echo with the tales of well-funded campaigns that met early ends. But money does create options, and at this pace, the Democrats see theirs growing, while the Republicans may well be losing some.

Take a look at the House. In January, newly selected DCCC Chairman Chris Van Hollen laid out a plan to defend his vulnerable freshmen while simultaneously attacking Republicans who eked through last November. "If we continue the current pace, we will have the resources to fully support that strategy," he said. Meanwhile, Rep. Tom Cole, who heads the National Republican Congressional Committee, started the year with quite a different set of priorities: Pay off the committee's debt and then start tucking money away for the campaign season.

Cole has made good on his promise. The committee has raised $29 million and spent $27 million. Today, it has got $2 million in the bank and $4 million in debts outstanding, according to its reports. Cole seems on track to move the committee's balance from red to black by year's end.

But that's when the hard slog begins, because the Democrats' edge isn't just the byproduct of high energy within their ranks. The long-feared Republican fundraising machine also appears to be in decline. While the Republican National Committee has maintained its dominance over the Democratic National Committee, raising $45 million to the DNC's $27 million, even that edge is on the lower end of historic patterns.

And consider this: When President Bush was running for reelection in 2004, his appearance at the RNC's annual spring gala raised $38.5 million. During last year's congressional campaign season, the presidential gala raised $17 million. This year, it raised $10.5 million.

In addition, the loss of control of Congress has stripped Republicans of one of their most lucrative fundraising assets: committee chairmanships. According to a Center for Inquiry study released last week, corporate donors have made a seismic shift since January toward the new Democratic chairmen. In the first six months of this year, political action committees donated $41 million to Democrats, compared with $24 million for Republicans. During the previous year, Republicans received $32 million in PAC contributions, compared with $22 million for the Democrats, the report concluded.

The presidential campaign season also looms as an obstacle to congressional fundraising. In private conversations, Republican fundraising experts dismiss the yawning gap between their primary field and the Democrats' roster. "When the nominee becomes clear, he will have all the resources he needs," said one longtime Republican operative.

History supports that notion. After scraping through hard times in the 2003 Democratic primary, John Kerry found himself flush with cash, even matching the Bush-Cheney machine, when he swept the Iowa and New Hampshire primaries.

But that gush of money does not automatically extend to the congressional committees. Van Hollen said he spends plenty of time these days warning donors: "Do not take the House for granted. Things can change quickly."

Even if the money rolls in, managing it frugally can be crucial. In the 2006 cycle, the Republican House committee raised more than the Democrats. What both sides said helped tip the scales in many races was that the Democrats outspent the Republicans in the final weeks of that contentious campaign cycle.

How did they manage that? . . .they had more cash in the bank.