2008 Presidential Campaign, Time to Follow the Money
Did you notice the turn as we now have less than 12 months to go in the 2008 Presidential Election race?
With the two dominant parties ready to crown their candidates, this is a good time to dig in and count the beans for the war chests they have each raised to date.
I tracked down this website that shows more detail breaking down the total of $420 million raised for all the candidates, Race for the White House.
As stated on that site, this election race is on a pace to raise a record amount of $1 BILLION total Whoa! That is one big number.
With that money being spent and an electorate that in mass can be best described as apathetic, the candidates that can spend the most to build name awareness have a great edge.
Let's break down some of the figures that jumped out at me.
Senator Hillary Clinton has raised over $90 million so far, with Barack Obama not too far behind at $80.2 million. A distant third is Senator John Edwards at $30.9 million.
Across the aisle, Mitt Romney has raised $53.6 million and Rudy Giuliani brought in $30.6 million. An interesting note is that Romney's campaign finance has current debts that are double their cash on hand. Looks like he needs some serious capital raising to last. Strong primary results are crucial to this campaign's operation.
Hillary Clinton is sitting on more cash in the bank than total spent so far. $50.4 million in cash ready to go to work. Significant advantage for her campaign at this critical juncture in the campaign.
If you follow the money trails in greater detail you will find that the candidates of both of the dominant parties will receive contributions from the same contributors. Huh? Are those contributions ideas on governance or just to gain influence? That is a good topic for a future post.
This election race will be quite interesting by March of next year as the foreshadowing of our two choices become clear.
Two choices.
Out of 300 million people can political views be best representated and debated by only two groups?
Comments