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Wednesday, November 5, 2008 7:00 PM
By: Jim Meyers
Barack Obama’s presidential campaign smashed all previous fundraising records, raking in more than an astounding $650 million from some 3 million donors and giving him a huge advantage over rival John McCain.
But questions abound regarding the legality of many of the donations that helped propel him to victory.
And one question is: Did Obama “buy” the election?
Obama’s fundraising haul was more than twice the amount Democrat John Kerry raised in 2004, and more than twice what George Bush and Al Gore combined brought in during the 2000 presidential campaign.
“Nobody could have imagined numbers like this or participation like this,” veteran fundraiser Alan Solomont told Bloomberg.com.
Obama’s fundraising effort was in high gear from the very start, bringing in $24.8 million for the primary during the first three months of 2007, compared to $19.1 million for Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.
By the end of 2007, Obama had raised $102 million. He won the Iowa primary on Jan. 3, 2008, and raised another $36 million that month.
Almost half of Obama’s money came from people donating $200 or less, compared with 34 percent for McCain, Bloomberg reported.
Obama on two occasions promised to work with McCain on an agreement to accept public financing. McCain did accept public financing, limiting his ability to raise private donations, but in June Obama reneged on his vows, enabling him to raise unlimited amounts from donors.
The press by and large did not hold Obama accountable for the broken promises. But McCain sharply criticized him, saying: “Twice he looked the American people in the eye and said he would sit down with me before he abandoned public financing. He didn’t mean a word of it. When it was in his interest to break his promise, he tossed it aside like it didn’t mean a thing.”
Obama’s fundraising “revolutionized the way presidential campaigns are financed and may kill the Watergate-era system of providing public money for the general election,” Bloomberg observed.
Free to raise unlimited funds, Obama’s campaign brought in at least $200 million in September and October, more than doubling the amount available to McCain.
Obama’s huge edge in finances enabled him to devote nearly three times as much as McCain to advertising, with the Democrat spending $21.5 million to McCain’s $7.5 million from Oct. 21 to Oct. 28 as Election Day neared.
On the day before the election, Obama ran 3,410 ads in seven competitive states, while McCain ran only 1,900.
Obama also far outspent McCain on staff salaries, helping him to open field offices and fund a get-out-the-vote effort.
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http://www.newsmax.com/insidecover/obama_fundraisng/2008/11/05/148218.html