So you know how we said Obama’s campaign was set to announce that it had brought in a preposterous $100 million in donations last month? Well those early reports shot too low — by $50 million dollars.
Senator Barack Obama’s campaign announced on Sunday that it had raised more than $150 million in September, a record-shattering amount underscoring again the unprecedented amounts of money he has attracted.
Mr. Obama’s contributions in September more than doubled the $66 million he collected in August, which had already far exceeded what any previous presidential campaign in history had raised in a single month.
In a videotaped message included in an e-mail to supporters, David Plouffe, the Obama campaign manager, said that Mr. Obama had added 632,000 new donors in September, bringing the campaign’s total to 3.1 million. The average contribution, Mr. Plouffe said, was $86.
Mr. Plouffe said the money has enabled the campaign to expand to traditional Republican strongholds, noting it had begun to pour resources into West Virginia. He also sought to portray the campaign’s fund-raising success as evidence of Mr. Obama’s grassroots support.
“The two groups that have given us the most contributions are retirees and students, which shows how Barack’s call for change has spanned the generations,” Mr. Plouffe said. “Nurses, teachers, small business owners. It really is the fabric of America that has built this campaign.”
Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy was once mocked and derided by Democratic leaders, but it’s doubtful that he or they expected to have this kind of loot to work with in the next national elections. The attempt to make Republicans play a wide map is working really well — every dime that McCain is spending defending red states like Virginia and North Carolina is money he’s not spending in necessary EV-heavy battlegrounds like Ohio and Florida — but Obama can play offense in both.
UPDATE: McCain responds. “History shows us where unlimited amounts of money are in political campaigns, it leads to scandal.”
