In Campaign 2008, Candidates Starting Earlier, Spending More

Add to that the rising price of travel, Elmendorf said. When McCain first ran for president in 2000, he defrayed some travel costs by flying on corporate jets. Under Federal Election Commission rules at the time, candidates could bill their campaign accounts the cost of a first-class ticket for a corporate flight.

But now, his campaign has said, McCain is abiding by a pledge to stay off corporate jets. In the past year, that has meant spending more than $1.1 million on charter flights, according to filings by his leadership committee.

Candidates will also be trying to reach voters through the Internet and through their mailboxes, and that will mean unprecedented investment in technology, much of which was in its infancy four years ago. This year, nearly all candidates are posting videotaped speeches on their Web sites to speak directly to voters.

When then-Sen. John Edwards (D-N.C.) began preparing for his first presidential bid, he made an early investment of nearly $100,000 to build an Internet operation. As he began constructing his 2008 effort, he found the cost to put his stamp on the Web had more than quadrupled, with close to half a million dollars already spent on consultants and technical-support teams.

Just as Edwards saw Web site production grow more costly, others are finding new ways to modernize campaign techniques that once relied on index cards and shoe leather.

Ken Strasma, a consultant whose firm developed a microtargeting program that uses vast supplies of marketing data to identify and persuade a candidate's likely supporters, said the powerful targeting programs will be more widely used this cycle.

In small states, such as Iowa, a candidate can spend $100,000 to $200,000 to identify every caucus voter within their reach and figure out how best to persuade them. In larger states, those costs will multiply.

Already, Edwards and Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) have each paid $50,000 to the Iowa Democratic Party for copies of its voter files, and Dodd forked over $50,000 to the New Hampshire Democratic State Committee for its membership list.

Then there's television, which is always one of the largest expenses facing a presidential campaign.

Rath said he expects candidates to be up on television far sooner this time around. If candidates forgo public funding, as many expect, they will no longer be subject to strict spending limits on the amount candidates could invest in each state. Under FEC rules, candidates taking public money would face a spending cap that in 2004 amounted to just $729,000 in New Hampshire, though most candidates found legal ways to circumvent that limit.

Four years ago, only President Bush, Kerry and former Vermont governor Howard Dean opted out of the public system, which meant they could ignore the state-by-state limits altogether.

Steve Murphy, who managed the campaign of then-Rep. Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.) in the 2004 cycle and is now working with New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson (D), said that four years ago spending limits might have left most candidates with no more than a couple of million dollars to spend on television in the early states. Now that number could increase tenfold.