This might explain those passive-aggressive donor solicitation emails. The White House Dossier’s Keith Koffler catches some news buried in the New York Times write-up on Obama’s town hall yesterday. According to Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, the president is on track to pull in $55 million when the filing deadline ends Friday – which is $30 million less than he raised in the previous quarter:
President Obama will raise substantially less in the second quarter of his campaign than the first, according to the New York Times.
The paper writes Obama campaign manager Jim Messina has told Democratic officials the president will raise about $55 million in the quarter that ends Sept. 30, about $30 million less than he raised the first quarter of his campaign – which was the second quarter of the year, ending June 30.
The news was – gosh who would have expected – buried within the Times story.
No doubt, $55 million is a lot of money. But something’s not right.
At the Green Room, Howard Portnoy crunches the numbers and finds this would be a 36 percent drop for Obama from last quarter.
The question is, does this possible $55 million include Democratic National Committee contributions? Obama’s total haul for the previous quarter was reported at $86 million, but he only raised $49 million of that for his campaign, with the other $38 million from the DNC. If the $55 million is just the Obama campaign’s fundraising, then the president may actually beat his last quarter total. But if it includes DNC contributions, that’s a major cause for alarm.
Either way, it sounds like the campaign is scrambling to push expectations way down for Friday. And there are other signs the disclosures won’t be good for Obama. Bloomberg reported this afternoon Mitt Romney has stolen at least 100 of Obama’s 2008 Wall Street donors.
