Obama: The First Billion Dollar Candidate?
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, 2012 Election, Barack, Money
Looks like he added over $100M to his fundraising total in October alone, and between raising money for the DNC, his transition and the inauguration, Politico speculates that Obama is set to become
Politico runs the numbers…what say you?
The vast majority of the donations were generated during the unusually long primary and general election campaigns. A financial disclosure report scheduled to be released Thursday is expected to show that Obama raised more than $100 million in the final month of the campaign, campaign aides said.That will bring the grand total for his campaign to more than $750 million — more than the combined sum raised by President George W. Bush and his Democratic rival, John F. Kerry, in the record-setting 2004 campaign and nearly as much as the total raised by all the presidential contenders then.
The Obama team also helped raise more than $50 million for the Democratic convention’s host committee in Denver and more than $100 million for the Democratic National Committee. He’s still raising money for his transition and Inauguration. Four years ago, Bush raised $40 million for his Inauguration.
The question now for the GOP…how to possibly match this or catch up? Because Obama has more emails addresses than probably every single GOP politician combined, as well as the social media infrastructure he can simply switch back on when 2011 rolls around.
And to that point…
When a veteran Republican fundraiser was asked if the GOP ever thought a Democratic contender could raise that much money, the answer was a simple and emphatic “No!”
Obama may not end up being a transformational candidate when it comes to his policies, but there’s no doubt that he has forever changed the way political campaigns are run.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 and is filed under 2008 Election, 2012 Election, Barack, Money. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 2nd, 2008 at 3:24 pm
All that needs to happen is that the light needs to be shined on *all* political donations. Let’s see who really put in the money into his campaign. I personally don’t believe in restricting political donations, but I do believe in disclosure.
December 2nd, 2008 at 4:36 pm
He owes a lot of favors to a lot of people.