Posted April 4, 2007 by Catie Hinckley

Show Me the Money (and I mean lots of it!)

Amid much fanfare and speculation, the first quarter presidential fundraising results are in. The staggering totals make compelling cases for the need to fix the presidential public financing system and to identify the fundraising bundlers who help to fill the massive campaign war chests. 

Candidates are celebrating the record amounts of money they have raised, smashing the previous $8.9 million record set by Al Gore in the first quarter of 1999.  Democratic Senators Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama lead the field raising $26 million and $25 million, respectively.  Republican candidate and former Massachusetts Governor, Mitt Romney, leads his party in fundraising with $21 million; former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and Senator John McCain trail with $15 million and $12.5 million. 

After a disappointing first quarter, longtime campaign finance reformer, Senator McCain, announced that he will follow the trend started by President Bush and establish honorary campaign designations for fundraising bundlers:  McCain 100s and McCain 200s will be the categories for those who can collect $100,000 and $200,000 worth of contributions.  In order to raise such vast amounts of money, candidates are increasingly dependent on big-dollar, bundled contributions and the public should know just who it is that is doing the bundling.  Legislation to draw back the curtain on campaign bundlers is sorely needed, for many reasons—millions and millions and millions of them.

There is at least one bright spot in these early reports, however.  Senator Obama’s campaign announced that he received contributions from more than 100,000 donors, nearly doubling the number of donors of his closest fundraising competitor, Senator Clinton.  Almost $7 million of Obama’s $25 million was raised over the Internet.  These numbers prove that large sums of money can be raised from small-dollar donors and that netroots activity could have a great impact on this big-dollar election. 

While the political pundits measure the viability of candidates based on their first quarter fundraising and the campaigns regroup after their relative success or disappointment, we are in awe of the record-breaking amount of money being raised.  Senator Clinton nearly tripled the previous fundraising record and this race is well on its way to the first $1 billion campaign. 

The candidates embroiled in this unprecedented fundraising recognize the problems of the arms race. Senator Obama (with Senator Feingold) is cosponsoring a bill in the Senate to repair the system; Senators McCain and Obama have agreed to accept public funding in the general election if their opponent does; and Senator Clinton publicly supports fixing the presidential public financing system.  It is too late for 2008, but we hope that the necessary changes will be made to make public financing a viable option for candidates in 2012.