Obama's Big Day

In your face, Hillary Clinton. Barack Obama announced his 1Q fundraising results today. With three fewer weeks in the race than Hillary, Obama still managed to raise $25M to her $26M. But perhaps more impressive are the underlying stats:

• Number of individual Obama donors: 100,000 (number of individual Hillary donors: 50,000)
• Number of online donors: 50,000
• Amount of money raised online: $6.9M
• Percentage of donations under $100: 90%

Those are just amazing numbers. I have to believe that there are an awful lot of people out there like me who believe it's time for Americans to make America great again and believe it can be done under the leadership of someone like Obama. And I really love the fact that he reached out to people who, in an age of $2500 a plate fundraising dinners, don't normally get to participate in this part of the political process. A strategy, perhaps, but it's been so long since a candidate has shown any interest in courting us small donor peons that I really don't care. I'd rather see him beholden to ordinary citizens than big money donors.

Still, the data suggested that Obama's strategy of holding low-dollar events in addition to massive $1 million galas had succeeded, at least for now. He held numerous events that cost $25 or $100 per ticket, in an effort to bring in younger, first-time donors who could be tapped again for future donations because they had not yet reached the $2,300 limit for contributing to the primaries. (Donors can give another $2,300 to each candidate for use in the general election).

On the Republican side, Mitt Romney did extraordinarily well with $23M although he seems to have done it at the expense of Rudy Giuliani ($15M) and John McCain ($12.5M).