Bill Richardson raised
$6 million for Q1 2007. Not bad for a 2nd tier candidate. He's spent $1 million of it, which tells me he needs to start saving his money. It gets more expensive as time goes on. There are reports - I can't find links right now - of Clinton and Obama staffers bunking 4 to a room in hotels and using other cost-saving measures. These campaigns are raising record amounts, but they know all that means is they will be spending in record amounts. Richardson doesn't have the luxury of doing either, right now, and needs to watch every single penny.
The fundraising picture is incomplete and interesting for it. Obama isn't really releasing numbers yet, just hinting around. Clinton isn't breaking down what portion of donations are 'primary-only.' She also just transferred $10 million from her Senate campaign account.
Let's think about that for a moment. 10 million dollars is a lot of money. Due to John McCain's campaign finance
reform, senators can transfer money willy-nilly from one campaign to another. Governors, Representatives, Mayors of New York cannot do the same. What a stupid law. Either everyone should be able to do that, or no one.
But what really gets me about Hillary's $10 million transfer is how she could have used it to further help the DSCC last year. It's not that she needed to impoverish herself. But would we have a Lieberman-proof majority, for example, if she had been even a little freer with her superfluous campaign funds?
The next few days should be interesting as Clinton and Obama each work to become entrenched as
the major candidate.