Barack Obama Presidential Primary Campaign, 2008 - Fundraising

Fundraising

See also: Fundraising for the 2008 United States presidential election

Hyatt board member Penny Pritzker served as the national finance chair of the campaign; Pritzker served on the finance committee for Obama's 2004 Senate run. Obama has said he will not accept donations from federal lobbyists or political action committees during the campaign. While he started to collect private donations for a general election account, Obama asked the Federal Election Commission if he could later return the money if he decided to take public funds. In response, the FEC allowed presidential candidates to take contributions for a general election campaign even if they later decided to accept public money.

Alan D. Solomont, who led a group that raised $35 million for John Kerry in 2004, has signed on with the campaign, saying Obama "is the sort of person America wants in the White House right now." Other fundraisers that have joined the campaign include David Geffen, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Mark Gorenberg.

Obama's fundraising prowess early on matched that of Hillary Clinton's and, financially speaking, stayed competitive with her. On April 4, 2007, Obama's campaign announced that they had raised $25 million in the first quarter of 2007, coming close to Hillary Clinton's $26 million in first quarter contributions. Over 100,000 people donated to the campaign, and $6.9 million was raised through the Internet. $23.5 million of Obama's first quarter funds can be used in the primary, the highest of any candidate.

Obama's fundraising skills were affirmed again in the second quarter of 2007, when his campaign received $32.5 million in donations: $5.5 million more than his nearest rival, Hillary Clinton, whose campaign raised around $27 million. Obama's 258,000 individual donors revealed his wide grassroots appeal and success raising funds via the Internet. Altogether Obama's campaign raised US$58 million during the first half of 2007, topping all other candidates and exceeding previous records for the first six months of any year before an election year.

For the third quarter of 2007, which typically sees lower numbers than the rest of the year, Obama raised $20 million, still a large amount but bested by Clinton, who led all candidates with $27 million raised. Obama's campaign reported adding 108,000 new donors through in the quarter, for a total of 365,000 individual contributors in the first nine months.

In the fourth quarter of 2007, Obama raised $23.5 million, while Clinton raised $27.3 million. By January 2008, Obama had received over 800,000 donations from over 600,000 individual donors.

The Obama campaign raised $32 million in the month of January 2008 alone, from over 250,000 separate supporters. When it was disclosed that Hillary Clinton loaned $5 million of her own money to her campaign, Obama's supporters donated over $6.5 million in less than 24 hours. When the Clinton campaign reported that it had raised over $10 million in the five days after Super Tuesday, the Obama campaign reported raising "well more" than that.

Candidate financial disclosures released after the Wisconsin and Hawaii primaries raised Barack Obama's estimated January take to $37 million, about $17 million more than the second-placed candidate Hillary Clinton. Much of her fundraising was furthermore ineligible for primary-contest spending, and her campaign is projected to have ended the month in debt by over eight million dollars, one-quarter of that being unpaid fees to consultant Mark Penn. In February, the Obama campaign surpassed the one million donor mark, a first for a competitive primary campaign in the United States and raised $55 million, setting a record for political fundraising in one month. Of the $55 million raised in February $45 million of it was contributed over the Internet—without Obama hosting a single fund-raiser.

According to reports filed with the FEC and news from the Boston Herald, by the end of the first quarter of 2008, the campaign had raised more money ($133,549,000) than it had raised in all of 2007 (103,802,537). By the end of March, Obama had raised a total of over $235 million during the course of his campaign.