Redstate

By Dienekes Posted in Democrats — Comments (0) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »

None of the Republican candidates have released their figures yet, but several Dems have, so let's take a look at what they've raised so far this year (via yahoo):

New York Senator Hillary Clinton ($26M (plus $10M from her Senate war chest)) and former North Carolina Senator John Edwards ($14M mil ($1M usable only for general)) both shattered previous 1Q records ($8.7M for Phil Gramm in '95 and $8.9M for Al Gore in '99).

Other Democrat hopefuls (all primary totals): New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson with $6M ($5M on hand), Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd more than $4M (plus $5M from his Senate campaign, for $7.5M on hand), and Delaware Senator Joe Biden with almost $4M (including less than $2M from his Senate fund).

The rest of the candidates, R and D, should be releasing their totals sometime this week.

Now for the speculation:

1. Obama has not come out yet, why? Either he's done very well, perhaps surpassing even Clinton (though I find that unlikely), or he's trying to manage expectations. I'm going to predict its the latter, and he's closer to Edwards than Clinton, but I could be wrong.

2. Clinton did not release a primary/general split. I speculate that may be because a rather obscene, presumptuous amount of that is marked for the general (probably no more than 1/4, but that could still be $5-6M of her $26M, which is more than the rest of the field sans Edwards (and Obama) have raised just for the primary).

3. If rumors of Romney or other Republicans raising $30M+ are anywhere near true, meaning they'll have surprassed even Her Inevitableness by a fair margin, that would be the big news of the week.

And an observation:

Just as we've been bemoaning the early start and frontloading of the process, I hardly think its a good thing that we're seeing an explosion in the cost of campaigns that dwarfs even 2004 (on the other hand, subsequent quarterly reports may fall significantly as fundraising may have become as frontloaded as the nomination process).

ETA And a second: what does that say about the (success or) failure of Campaign Finance Reform?

Update: There are estimates for the Obama camp of 20-22 million, though I haven't seen any confirmed figure yet (also no word on what the primary/general split for those estimates might be). So the tentative order so far in both parties is:

1. Clinton
2. Romney
3. Obama
4. Giuliani
5. Edwards
6. McCain?