Fundraising Gap Likely to Persist For Campaigns

Advisers to Clinton have suggested that her main fundraising rival, Obama, could outpace her for the quarter. The Obama team is staying quiet.

It's a different game for the financially struggling campaigns, which are already attempting to explain away their less-than-stellar performances.

Spokesmen for both McCain and Edwards insist that they will have enough money to campaign vigorously throughout the primary season. And they plan to stress that they have increased their overall number of donors, a key sign of grass-roots strength this early in the election process.

"When we started this campaign, we calculated that we would need to raise $40 million by the Iowa caucuses to get our day in the sun in each of the early states and win the nomination," Trippi wrote in his e-mail to supporters. "Right now, we're ahead of that pace."

Brian Jones, a McCain spokesman, said his candidate's "principled stands" on tough issues are to blame for the fundraising troubles, especially his push for broad changes in the nation's immigration laws.

"It's an issue that over the last month has not been a favorite of a decent number of GOP primary voters," Jones said. "I'll let you draw your own conclusions. We will have the resources necessary to communicate the senator's message."

The early start to the 2008 campaign and the large number of states holding their primaries next Feb. 5 require candidates to have huge bankrolls. And at this stage of the cycle, a campaign's fundraising ability becomes a measure of its overall success. "The money primary keeps going," said Alex Vogel, a GOP consultant not affiliated with any candidate. "It's more and more like law school -- there are no exams in between, and then at the end you get your final grade."

To fill that void, the campaigns are dreaming up novel fundraising schemes. Obama's team awarded dinner with the candidate to four small-dollar donors. A few Romney contributors went to a Red Sox game with Romney's son Tagg.

But the fundraising captains in both parties say the tried-and-true methods are still the ones that fill the coffers: cold calls, intimate gatherings with the candidates and mega-"rubber chicken" dinners in ballrooms.

"Anytime you can personally call versus sending a piece of mail, your response rate will go up five times," said Terry McAuliffe, a former Democratic National Committee chairman and veteran fundraiser who is now with the Clinton campaign.

As Dirk Van Dongen, a veteran lobbyist who is heading up Giuliani's Washington area fundraising, put it: "Selling is about getting a bunch of nos so you can get to the yeses."

Staff writer Dan Balz contributed to this report.