WASHINGTON — Barack Obama raised $52 million in June, leveling the money chase with presidential rival John McCain and the Republican National Committee and bankrolling an aggressive push into states that previous Democratic candidates considered unwinnable.
Obama’s campaign said it had finished its latest record-smashing fundraising month with $72 million in cash. The Democratic National Committee, which spends almost all of its money in support of the party’s presidential candidate, announced that it had raised $22.4 million in June, ending the month with $20.3 million in cash and giving Obama and the Democrats a combined $92 million in cash.
McCain’s campaign announced last week that he had his best month in June, collecting $22 million and closing the month with $27 million in cash. The RNC said it had raised nearly $26 million in June and had nearly $69 million in cash, giving the Arizona senator and his party a combined total of more than $95 million.
Obama has raised about $328 million to date, far surpassing President Bush’s record of more than $269 million in 2004 and suggesting that he could reach a half-billion dollars this fall. The Illinois senator recently made a controversial decision to become the first presidential candidate to forgo public financing — $84.1 million this year — for the general election campaign.
Obama’s cash gusher creates new opportunities, said Lawrence Jacobs, the director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for the Study of Politics and Governance.
With $70 million to $80 million in financing, most past presidential campaigns have talked about a national campaign but have wound up focusing on fewer than a dozen swing states.
“You look at the map now,” Jacobs said, “and it looks like there are 20 to 30 states in play. He’s setting up operations in lots of states that you usually haven’t seen them in, some of the Southern states and places like Indiana where . . . Democrats haven’t won in decades.”
Obama’s June performance, during a relative lull in the campaign, was even more impressive because the campaign said that only $2 million to $4 million of the donations were designated for the general election. That suggests that even though many backers have given Obama the maximum allowable $2,300 for the primary election season, which ends in early September, his base of more than 1.5 million donors continues to expand.
“He’s not mortal,” Jacobs quipped. “He’s a fundraising god. It’s like biblical in scale.”
While Democrats traditionally criticized “big money Republicans,” Jacobs said, “the reality is that it’s a liberal Democrat who’s just taken a stick of dynamite to our campaign finance framework.”
McCain has said he’ll limit his campaign to public financing in the fall.
Unlike McCain, Obama can use his leftover primary money for the general election, since he’s taking no public money, said Robert Biersack, a spokesman for the Federal Election Commission.
