Campaigns Scramble for Cash as Deadline Nears

June 26, 2007 — -- Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., and Barack Obama, D-Ill., can't say enough good things about each other's fundraising.

Obama is a virtual ATM, Clinton's campaign wants the public to know. It wouldn't be at all surprising, campaign officials say, if the first-term senator brings in more cash this quarter than the former first lady.

"He's raising a lot, and it's likely he will out-raise us this quarter," Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle told the Chicago Tribune earlier this month.

Obama, meanwhile, is equally impressed by the Clinton machine -- a fundraising engine, he reminds people, that was built over the eight years the Clintons spent in the White House.

"I'm sure the Clintons can raise much more money than us," he said at a Chicago fundraiser Monday night. "We're just trying to make sure that we can raise the paltry sums that allow us to compete."

Welcome to the strange, cruel world of early campaign fundraising, where kings are made, fortunes amassed and candidacies shaped more than six months before the first primary voters cast their ballots.

Clinton and Obama might both shatter fundraising records when the books are closed on the second quarter this weekend. But none of that will matter if one or the other brings in far more.

With the second quarter coming to a close Saturday, the candidates are engaged in one last dash for cash. They're sending out e-mail pitches, organizing receptions and dinners with high-dollar donors -- and, perhaps most important, managing expectations.

By the time financial totals get filtered through the media, what a candidate raises is almost secondary to whether that matches what they were expected to raise. That makes for some fascinating public maneuvering in the final days of a quarter.

Former President Bill Clinton himself even got in on the game Tuesday, in an e-mailed fundraising pitch sent to his wife's supporters.

"The fact is, our opponents may very well out-raise us -- and we can't afford to lose momentum now," he wrote.