McCain Money News Roundup for Oct. 24, 2008
The presidential candidates have now released their pre-election campaign finance reports, the last official, comprehensive look we’ll get at their spending and fundraising before Election Day. As the AP’s Jim Kuhnhenn reports, John McCain has been spending about $1.5 million a day and “likely has only $12 million to spend in the next 11 days before the Nov. 4 election.”
As for Obama, his fundraising appears to have slowed off the breakneck pace that allowed him to raise $150 million in September. In the first two weeks of the month, Obama raised $36 million. Still, when combined with money raised by the Democratic National Committee, Obama had $97 million on hand to spend, compared to $84 million for McCain and the Republican National Committee. (While the AP portrayed this as bad news for Obama, the Los Angeles Times’ Dan Morain saw it as further evidence of Obama’s dominance.)
Meanwhile, the Christian Science Monitor’s Linda Feldmann joins the chorus of reporters writing about the future of campaign finance in the wake of Obama’s blockbuster September. And the Baltimore Sun joins the chorus of newspaper editorial boards calling for the next president and Congress to fix a broken system.
Finally, CQ Politics’ Bart Jansen notes that watchdog groups, in the wake of Obama’s record-breaking haul, are “drafting ways to attempt in the next Congress to curb big-dollar presidential campaign bundlers without discouraging the wave of small-dollar contributions flowing in through the Internet.”
Tags: bundlers, campaign finance reform, fundraising, McCain, Obama, public financing, spending
