Democrat Hillary
Rodham Clinton raised $22 million this summer for her
presidential primary campaign, outpacing all other
candidates so far with her best three-month showing of
the year.
Clinton raised a
total of $27 million in the quarter, officials with her
campaign said Tuesday, but $5 million is designated for the
general election and can't be used in her quest for
the Democratic nomination. For the first time, she
reported attracting more new donors in a quarter than
her chief fund-raising rival, Illinois senator Barack Obama.
Her $80 million
fund-raising total for the 2008 presidential race puts
her on a par with Obama, though he still leads Clinton in
money raised for the primaries alone.
Clinton leads
other Democrats in national opinion polls, three months
before the first primaries.
Obama reported
raising at least $19 million from July through September
for the primaries and about $20 million overall for the
quarter, counting general election money. He has
raised a total of $75 million for the primary season
and about $4 million for the general election next year.
Clinton's summer
donations bring her total primary dollars raised this
year to $62 million. The New York senator has raised $17.6
million for the general election.
She also
supplemented her primary fund-raising earlier this year with
a $10 million transfer from her 2006 Senate campaign.
With their
third-quarter numbers, Obama and Clinton sit atop the
Democratic field in fundraising, comfortably ahead of their
nearest rival, John Edwards, who raised $7 million in
the past three months for a total of $30 million for
the year.
The Obama and
Clinton campaigns did not report how much money they have
on hand, totals that would signal how well positioned they
are to compete against each other in the months ahead.
While Clinton leads in national polls, she, Obama and
Edwards are clustered closely in polls of Iowa voters.
Iowa is scheduled to hold the first contest of the 2008
presidential season with its caucuses in January.
This was the
first quarter that Clinton has raised more primary money
than Obama, who has given her an unexpectedly tight
competition in the money race.
''This is the
moment when you showed that America is ready for change and
that you are ready to make history,'' campaign manager Patti
Solis Doyle said on the campaign's Web site in a
message to supporters. ''This is the moment when your
dedication defied the skeptics. The early primaries and
caucuses are coming up fast. We're going to need your help a
lot in the next few months.''
The Clinton
campaign said her third-quarter contributions included money
from 100,000 new donors, surpassing the 93,000 the Obama
campaign said it attracted during the summer. Overall,
the Obama campaign has said it has attracted 350,000
donors.
''More than
350,000 Americans have already signaled the kind of change
they want in Washington by contributing to the Obama
campaign,'' spokesman Bill Burton said. ''We have
raised a historic 74.9 million in dollars available
for primary spending, without transferring one cent
from any other campaign fund and with no money from federal
lobbyists or PACs.''
Clinton, whose
campaign had appeared focused on big-dollar donors in
earlier quarters, expanded her reach to smaller contributors
over the summer. Her campaign held 20 low-dollar
fund-raisers during the quarter, including one Sunday
in Oakland, Calif., that the campaign said drew 14,000
people. Author John Grisham held a similar event in Virginia
last week.
Clinton and Obama
have helped push the Democratic field into record
levels of fund-raising for a presidential campaign. (Jim
Kuhnhenn, AP)