With an expected take of $35 million, February is proving to be Hillary Clinton's strongest fundraising month, an impressive feat for a campaign that's, let's see, in disarray and, oh yeah, whose donors had maxed out, etc...
Hillary Clinton's campaign is set to announce later today that she's on track to raise roughly $35 million in the month of February, a huge month by any standard measure of political fundraising and her best of the campaign.A Clinton advisor confirmed the figure, which is enough to suggest that money won't be an obstacle to Clinton's campaign going forward -- though Clinton is still being heavily outspent by Barack Obama and his labor allies in Texas and Ohio. The surge has been fueled largely online contributions that Clinton has said are coming in to the tune of $1 million a day.
This number may ultimately pale in comparison to Obama's fundraising for the same period (Smith reports that Obama spokesman Bill Burton has stated that the campaign will announce that he's raised "considerably more" this month) but I think most would consider it a surprisingly strong figure. The Clinton campaign will reveal more details on a conference call later today.
Update [2008-2-28 15:44:32 by Todd Beeton]:Peter Daou, Hillary Clinton's online outreach coordinator, elaborated on the outstanding online fundraising from this month on a conference call a few minutes ago.
The expected $35 million for February comes from 300,000 donors, 200,000 of whom were new donors, and $30 million was raised online. It really took off after it was revealed that Hillary Clinton had lent her campaign money. "Hillary's grassroots supporters have contributed millions of hours of volunteer time, have blogged, written letters, signed petitions, made hundreds of thousands of calls into key states and have donated to the campaign. But when they found out in February that the senator made a loan to her campaign, they stepped up in a big way with their resources and financial contributions. And the campaign is immensely grateful to them."
The campaign has raised $150m since Jan 20, 2007.
The central message of the call, in addition to reveal Clinton's February fundraising strength, was to communicate to donors that they are in this for the long haul. Harold Ickes: "There are still 16 states left to vote including four on March 4th." In addition, re fundraising the campaign expressed confidence that they will do even better in March.
Obviously, a large part of the call was to cheerlead for donors. Harold Ickes assured donors that Clinton's superdelegates are holding as are the donors and McCauliff also made clear that the enthusiasm of volunteers is overwhelming.
[editor's note, by Todd Beeton]Updated with full text of Peter Daou's quote from the call.
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