Clinton Sets Bar for '08 Funds

Candidates eyeing 2008 presidential bids collected millions for a variety of campaign committees over the first three months of the year, with New York Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton far ahead of the pack.

Clinton, who faces two little-known Republican opponents in her bid for a second term in November, raised $6 million from Jan. 1 to March 31 -- outdistancing the 32 other senators seeking reelection this fall as well as her prospective rivals for the presidential nomination. Clinton has now raised better than $39 million for her reelection effort since coming to the Senate in 2001 and ended last month with nearly $20 million in the bank. Election law allows anything left over from her Senate campaign to be transferred to a presidential campaign.

"This is a tribute to her hard work and the depth of support she's built," said Ann Lewis, communications director for Clinton's campaign. Lewis added that 95 percent of Clinton's contributions were for $100 or less.

Among Republicans, Sen. George Allen (Va.) is showing the most fundraising muscle, collecting $1.75 million for his reelection fight and closing the quarter with $7.2 million on hand. Unlike Clinton, however, Allen faces a potentially serious challenge this fall from either former technology lobbyist Harris Miller (D) or Reagan administration Navy secretary James Webb (D), and he is likely to spend much of his war chest to defend his seat.

Reports documenting contributions and expenditures in the first three months of 2006 were due Saturday at the Federal Election Commission.

With the cost of winning a party's nomination for president in 2008 estimated by political analysts and operatives to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars, such a heavy focus on fundraising so early in the campaign is seen as a necessity for those candidates hoping to seriously compete.

The expectation among many strategists in both parties is that none of the top-tier candidates will accept public financing, and the spending caps that go with it, during the primary season.

As a result, all previous measures to judge fundraising success will be obsolete come 2008, said David Plouffe, a Democratic consultant not affiliated with any potential candidate.

Plouffe said former Vermont governor Howard Dean's $13 million cash-on-hand total in September 2003 "sent shock waves through the Democratic establishment" but predicted that by September 2007 several candidates will have double that amount in the bank and one -- Clinton -- could easily have triple.

Such a high fundraising bar has forced candidates to work double time, by raising dollars not only for their own federal reelection accounts but also for leadership political action committees. The latter are used to make donations to other candidates and cover travel expenses.

In the cases of Clinton and Allen, both spent the majority of their time raising dollars for their personal campaign committees rather than their leadership PACs over the first three months of the year -- a sound strategy given that excess cash in a Senate campaign account can be transferred directly to a presidential committee whereas dollars collected for a leadership organization cannot.

Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) and former Virginia governor Mark R. Warner (D), on the other hand, focused on taking donations for their leadership accounts. Warner collected $1.85 million through his Forward Together PAC between Jan. 1 and March 31 and retained more than $3 million in its coffers at the end of last month.