Today the presidential campaigns released their fundraising reports from May, showing that Mitt Romney and the RNC bested President Obama and the DNC by nearly $17 million.
Romney and the Republican National Committee (RNC) raised $76.8 million in May to Obama and the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) $60 million. It was the first full month that Romney and the RNC combined fundraising.
Combined with the Republicans' fundraising prowess on the super PAC side, the news put Democrats on the defensive. Obama officials said it was to be expected on the heels of Romney securing enough delegates for his party’s nomination. “We knew this day would come,” said Ben LaBolt, the Obama campaign’s press secretary.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida who is the chairman of the DNC also seemed unperturbed when speaking with Thomas Roberts on msnbc.
“We’re very pleased with our fundraising numbers,” she said. “We’re on track to raise the necessary resources... The Romney campaign and the RNC just formed their joint fundraising committee so they have a lot of low-hanging fruit they were able to pull down this month. We’ve had our joint fundraising committee for the past year.”
While Romney is hauling in checks from Wall Street, Obama’s May fundraising got a boost from his May fundraiser with George Clooney, including $9 million from donors asked to contribute $3 or more for a chance to win a ticket to the event.
Michael Rezendes of the Boston Globe points out that Obama continues to win the war for these small-dollar donors. From his June 7 article:
As of the end of April, 43 percent of the donors who contributed to the Obama campaign gave $200 or less, generating a total of $88.5 million, according to the Campaign Finance Institute, a nonpartisan Washington research group. By contrast, only 10 percent of those who gave to former governor Mitt Romney’s campaign had made donations of $200 or less, accounting for $9.8 million.
While Obama has embarked on a grass-roots fund-raising drive based largely on small donations, as he did four years ago, Romney has relied on contributions from more generous donors to his campaign, and unlimited contributions from wealthy individuals and corporations to the independent super PACs sympathetic to his candidacy.