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Obama Outraises Clinton As Battle Intensifies

Posted on: Friday, 8 February 2008, 15:00 CST

NEW ORLEANS Barack Obama raised $7.2 million in Super Tuesday's wake, and Hillary Rodham Clinton pulled in $6.4 million, stunning totals reflecting the intensity of their neck-and-neck race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Keenly aware of Obama's growing strength, Clinton challenged him to five debates in the next month. Obama put her off.

"We'll have some debates," Obama promised. But first, "I've got to spend time with voters."

Clinton, he argued, is better-known to voters in states coming up on the primary calendar.

Clinton, who lent her campaign $5 million in the run-up to Super Tuesday, brushed aside the notion she has money problems. She pointed to the roughly even split of delegates still being allocated from Tuesday's primaries and caucuses as evidence her campaign has the financial muscle to compete.

"We're going to be fine," said Clinton. "By the end of the week, we'll be back on track," she told ABC.

Top Clinton advisers offered to work without pay, but that wasn't necessary with the sudden influx of cash.

National campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe, in a conference call with 300 Clinton fund-raisers nationwide, assured them: "All staff 100 percent paid. Not an issue."

Both candidates have been raising and spending huge sums.

Each raised $100 million last year and spent at least $80 million. That compared with $128 million raised by all the Democratic candidates combined during 2003, the comparable period four years ago. President Bush, running uncontested, pulled in $129 million of his own that year.

Any financial crunch for Clinton would be largely be the result of lopsided fund raising in January, when Obama pulled in $32 million to her $13.5 million.

"Obama was able to do what no one thought possible, which is to finance Super Tuesday," said Anthony Corrado, a campaign finance expert at Colby College in Maine. "He was able to advertise in more states, went on TV earlier in more states and put more resources into ground efforts in most of these states."

Corrado said the question for Clinton is whether she will have the cash needed for expensive advertising campaigns in such contests as Ohio, Wisconsin and Texas.

"Obama's donor base continues to expand, so it's doubtful that she is going to be able to catch up," Corrado said, calling Obama an "unexpected financial colossus."

Clinton, as a former first lady, has had the advantage of better name recognition; Obama's recent financial advantage has helped him overcome that familiarity gap.

Obama, asked about Clinton's recent personal loan to her campaign, said it showed "she has not generated the kind of grass- roots enthusiasm that we have."

He's confident enough of his standing now to be choosy in the debate over debates.

Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle on Thursday sent the Obama camp a proposal for five one-on-one debates before the March 4 round of primaries in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island and Vermont.

"I'm sure we can find a suitable place to meet on the campaign trail," Solis Doyle wrote. "There's too much at stake and the issues facing the country are too grave to deny voters the opportunity to see the candidates up close."

Buoyed by a primary calendar in February that plays to his strengths, Obama plans a campaign swing through states holding contests this weekend, and will compete to win primaries in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia next week and Hawaii and Wisconsin the following week.

Clinton is concentrating more on March 4 contests in Ohio and Texas, where polling shows her with a significant lead. She even is looking ahead to Pennsylvania's primary on April 22.

Obama, campaigned in New Orleans on Thursday, offering himself as the best candidate to restore competence to the White House and rebuild trust broken by the government's botched response to Hurricane Katrina.

Speaking at Tulane University ahead of Saturday's Louisiana primary, the Illinois senator accused Bush of failing to do enough to help the Gulf Coast recover from the devastating storm of August 2005. He proposed a multifaceted program for the area, but did not indicate its total cost or how he would pay for it.

With Sen. John McCain now virtually certain to be the Republican nominee Mitt Romney dropped out Thursday Obama said that he is the better Democrat to challenge the Arizonan in the general election.

Democrats should "think about who matches up best against John McCain," Obama said during a flight from New Orleans to Nebraska.

"I would be in a stronger position to have a discussion about how we're going to reform Washington against John McCain, given that I don't take PAC money, I don't take federal lobbyists' money, I've been a champion on these issues," Obama said. "I think Senator Clinton would have a harder time making some of those arguments."

The Clinton campaign has noted that Obama does take donations from people who lobby at the state level, and it says she would bring important reforms to Washington.

Clinton campaigned Thursday in Virginia, which will be part of Tuesday's mid-Atlantic voting, then moved on to Washington State, which votes Saturday.

Source: Record, The; Bergen County, N.J.

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