Romney Out Raises Obama By $35 Million

There was a fundraising gap in the Presidential race this past month, but it’s not the one you might have thought:

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The Romney campaign announces one of the best single-month money hauls in presidential campaign history: $106.1 million for Romney for President, the Republican National Committee, and the Romney Victory fund that the two organizations share.

The Obama campaign, with the same triparite fundraising set-up, announcing $71 million in June, and doing it with the email equivalent of a hangdog expression: “We’ve got some good news and some bad news.”

Mostly bad! Four Junes ago, when John McCain was the Republican nominee-to-be, he and the RNC raised only $48 million. Obama and the DNC? $74 million. So they’re actually $3 million down from this time in the last campaign, and the Republicans are doubling that performance.

So, this is going to be a far different election than 2008, quite obviously

FILED UNDER: 2012 Election, US Politics, , , ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. wr says:

    Wow. Who knew that if you ran a campaign promising to shovel money at billionaires and multinational corporations after a corrupt Supreme Court overruled a century of laws restricting campaign contributions by these same groups you’d raise a ton of money? Clearly this proves that Romney is much more popular with the American people. Or at least the ones who count.

  2. LaMont says:

    So, this is going to be a far different election than 2008, quite obviously

    Thanks to the concept that corporations are now people.

    The fact that GOP contributions have increased by 121% from 2008, for arguably a weaker candidate than MaCain, is proof of how the Supreme court’s decision has undermined the democratic process.

    On the other hand, Obama raising $71 million (although tainted by the same “dirty money”) is better than what you’d expect from an incumbent.

  3. al-Ameda says:

    No doubt there are many dollars out there that want to support a guy who made his fortune by acquiring companies, stripping away assets, closing operations and firing American workers.

  4. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    Funny, where was all this outrage when Obama broke his promise to take public funding and outspent McCain by at least 2-1? Or when the Obama campaign said they’d raise and spend a billion dollars for his re-election?

    But I’m starting to come around on the “no corporate money” idea. Let’s pull the plug on the unions, the non-profit foundations, and all those other groups that are the lifeblood of the left.

    Hell, so far the SuperPACs against Romney have already outspent those for him. Shut them down, too.

  5. sam says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13:

    Hell, so far the SuperPACs against Romney have already outspent those for him. Shut them down, too.

    Ah, well, Citizens United, you know. But not to worry, Mittens’s peeps are there for him:

    From the Los Angeles Times:

    The line of Range Rovers, BMWs, Porsche roadsters and one gleaming cherry red Ferrari began queuing outside of Revlon Chairman Ronald Perelman’s estate off Montauk Highway long before Romney arrived, as campaign aides and staffers in white polo shirts emblazoned with the logo of Perelman’s property — the Creeks — checked off names under tight security.

    A New York City donor a few cars back, who also would not give her name, said Romney needed to do a better job connecting. “I don’t think the common person is getting it,” she said from the passenger seat of a Range Rover stamped with East Hampton beach permits. “Nobody understands why Obama is hurting them.

    “We’ve got the message,” she added. “But my college kid, the baby sitters, the nails ladies — everybody who’s got the right to vote — they don’t understand what’s going on. I just think if you’re lower income — one, you’re not as educated, two, they don’t understand how it works, they don’t understand how the systems work, they don’t understand the impact.”

    And from The New York Times:

    A woman in a blue chiffon dress poked her head out of a black Range Rover here on Sunday afternoon and yelled to an aide to Mitt Romney. “Is there a V.I.P. entrance? We are V.I.P.” ….

    A few cars back, Ted Conklin, the owner of the American Hotel in Sag Harbor, long a favorite of the Hamptons’ well-off and well-known, could barely contain his displeasure with Mr. Obama. “He is a socialist. His idea is find a problem that doesn’t exist and get government to intervene,” Mr. Conklin said from inside a gold Mercedes, as his wife, Carol Simmons, nodded in agreement.

    Ms. Simmons paused to highlight what she said was her husband’s generous spirit. “Tell them who’s on your yacht this weekend! Tell him!”

    Over Mr. Conklin’s objections, Ms. Simmons disclosed that a major executive from Miramax was on Mr. Conklin’s 75-foot yacht, because, she said, there were no rooms left at the hotel. [Source]

    Not much melting with ruth for those folks I’d hazard.

  6. LaMont says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13:

    Funny, where was all this outrage when Obama broke his promise to take public funding

    Source Please!!!

  7. Tsar Nicholas says:

    Not surprising on either front: Romney’s huge cash haul or Obama’s falling short of ’08’s pace.

    Regarding the latter there only are so many college students to send in their allowance monies, only so many loopy and wealthy liberals, and only so many seniors who can be duped into sending in part of their pensions, etc. Regarding the former the reality is once you step outside of certain, specific demographic cocoons — e.g., government office cubicles, SoHo, Hollywood, Dedham and SoMa, college and university campuses — the Obama presidency has been a catasrophe of monumental proportions. Small and mid-sized business owners, for example, are facing existential threats to everything for which they’ve toiled and sweated. Back in ’08 a lot of those folks didn’t truly grasp what was at stake. Now they do. It’s really that simple.

  8. Tlaloc says:

    Given the SCOTUS decision and Romney crowing about having pulled in 100 million in the couple days afterwards this really isn’t too bad for Obama. That Obama is almost matching his 2008 fundraising is surprising, I’d expect/hope it to be way down, frankly.

  9. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @LaMont: Let me clarify: I was talking about Obama’s pledge in 2008 — hence the reference to outspending McCain.

  10. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    And here’s the link to how super PACs are spending more against Romney than against Obama.

  11. An Interested Party says:

    It’s really that simple.

    Oh it’s simple alright…just not in the way you think it is…

  12. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @An Interested Party: The simplest summation I’ve seen so far is “in 2008, a lot of people voted for Obama to prove they’re not racist. In 2012, they’ll vote against Obama to prove they’re not stupid.”

  13. Jenos Idanian #13 says:

    @al-Ameda: No doubt there are many dollars out there that want to support a guy who made his fortune by acquiring companies, stripping away assets, closing operations and firing American workers.

    So, are you parroting the lie from the Obama campaign, or are you taking it straight from the source — the Washington Post?

  14. An Interested Party says:

    In 2012, they’ll vote against Obama to prove they’re not stupid.

    By voting for Romney? Said people would be deluding themselves…

  15. al-Ameda says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13:

    @An Interested Party: The simplest summation I’ve seen so far is “in 2008, a lot of people voted for Obama to prove they’re not racist. In 2012, they’ll vote against Obama to prove they’re not stupid.”

    So the Democrats who voted for Obama over McCain would otherwise have voted for McCain?
    Only Republicans could come up with that explanation for the 2008 election results.It stands to reason that for years Blacks were not racist because they routinely voted for white presidential candidates.

  16. LaMont says:

    @Jenos Idanian #13:

    The devil is in the details. Perhaps there was not much of an outcry because Obama had made it clear before then that all bets were off if McCain did not agree to an equal playing field. Apparently MCain would not agree and it cost him instead.

    And as far as your second link regarding data on more PAC money being spent against Romney, the data was taken beginning Janurary 2011. Are you kidding me? It has only been about a couple months since Romney and his PAC donors have begun to set their attention on Obama. In a weaker than usual Republican field, everyone pretty much new Romney was the presumtive nominee, hence, the head start by the Obama campaign. But I wouldn’t expect different from what apears to be the right leaning site that you cited. I’d be much more interested in what the data looks like from a couple months back until the November elections. Heck, nowadays I can’t even listen to a liberal radio station without hearing negative Obama attacks. Same goes for MSNBC!