Obama announced he would become the first presidential candidate since 1972 to rely totally on private donations for his general election campaign, opting out of the system of public financing and spending limits that was put in place after the Watergate scandal.
One reason, he said, is that “John McCain’s campaign and the Republican National Committee [...]
“We’ve made the decision not to participate in the public financing system for the general election,” Obama says in the video, blaming it on the need to combat Republicans, saying “we face opponents who’ve become masters at gaming this broken system. John McCain’s campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington [...]
The campaign didn’t reimburse Cindy McCain for the March 7-9, 2007, trip, which included the event near Times Square that brought in an estimated $100,000. Should it have done so?
According to federal campaign finance rules, the answer is yes — and no, depending on which portion of the code is applied.
Link:WSJ.com
Leading Democratic fundraisers predict that Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) will raise hundreds of millions of dollars over the next few months if he opts out of public financing and begins raising money for the general election.
Specifically, they say Obama could raise $100 million in June and could attract 2.5 million to 3 million new donors [...]
A review of campaign finance data offers not one ounce of good news and barely any hope for the McCain campaign’s ability to compete with Obama’s fundraising prowess.
To make matters worse, Obama’s campaign, which raised $272 million through April for the primary, now is reaching out to Clinton’s fundraisers, who raised another $200 million through [...]
On Good Morning America Thursday, ABC News’ Chief Washington Correspondent George Stephanopoulos reported “the Democratic National Committee will no longer accept contributions from federal lobbyists, will no longer take contributions from PACs” in keeping with Obama’s well-publicized policy.
Link:ABCNEWS.com
Beverly Fanning is among the campaign donors who’ll be joining President Bush at a gala at Washington’s Ford’s Theater Sunday night, but she says that won’t dissuade her from her current passion: volunteering for Barack Obama’s presidential campaign.
She isn’t the only convert. A McClatchy computer analysis, incomplete due to the difficulty matching data from various [...]
“At the end of the April, John McCain had cash on hand of over $60 million, and Sen. Obama had cash on hand of over $50 million,” Fiorina said on CNN. However, she added the money that the Republican National Committee (RNC) has in the bank to McCain’s total. The RNC has a significant cash [...]
“The core image of John McCain is as a reformer in Washington — and the more dominant the story is about the lobbying teams around him, the more you put that into question,” said Terry Nelson, who was Mr. McCain’s campaign manager until he left in a shake-up last fall. “If the Obama campaign can [...]
To date, John McCain has 118 lobbyists either working or raising money for him. So far, he’s fired only three of them:
Link:The Huffington Post
Senator Barack Obama’s campaign is steering the candidate’s wealthy supporters away from independent Democratic groups, calling into question what had been expected to be the groups’ central role in this year’s Democratic offensive against Senator John McCain.
“From the beginning of this race Obama has told supporters that if they want to help his effort, they [...]
As heiress to her father’s stake in Hensley & Co. of Phoenix, Cindy McCain is an executive whose worth may exceed $100 million. Her beer earnings have afforded the GOP presidential nominee a wealthy lifestyle with a private jet and vacation homes at his disposal, and her connections helped him launch his political career — [...]
The once-formidable fund-raising machine of Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton has begun to sputter at the worst possible moment for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Clinton advisers and donors said Thursday, with spending curtailed on political events and advertising as Clinton seeks to compete in the last six nominating contests.
Clinton’s diminished political momentum, following Tuesday’s loss [...]
“You know, my husband and I have been married 28 years and we have filed separate tax returns for 28 years. This is a privacy issue. My husband is the candidate,” Cindy McCain, wife of Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting John McCain, said in an interview aired on NBC’s “Today” on Thursday.
Asked if she would release her [...]
One of the most inviting is the near certainty that the Obama campaign would agree to pay back the $11.4 million she has loaned her own bid, along with an estimated $10 million to $15 million in unpaid campaign expenses.
In addition, Democrats, both those who are loyal and those who are opposed to her campaign, [...]
