At first blush, John McCain’s $15 million fundraising haul in March may sound like good news for his campaign. After all, it was his best month to date.
The figure was confirmed by a McCain campaign official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the figure has not yet been officially released. The amount represents his best month yet, up from $11 million he raised in February and the $11.7 million he brought in for January.
But the fact Senator Barack Obama brought in $40 million and Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton raised about $20 million in March highlights anew the fund-raising disparity between the Democrats and Republicans that has been a recurring theme over the past year.
The McCain campaign is expecting, however, to begin seeing the real fruit of its efforts to build up its fund-raising apparatus this month, now that its joint fund-raising arm with the Republican National Committee is up and running, enabling donors to write a single large check that will then be apportioned between the McCain campaign and the party.
We’ll see if matters improve in the coming months, but the New York Times characterized the $15 million figure as evidence of McCain’s fundraising “picking up.” That’s a positive spin on what appears to be discouraging news for the Republican candidate.
Jonathan Singer offers some much-needed context:
In March, the Obama campaign raised some $40 million, putting their overall total for the quarter in the range of $130 million. The Clinton campaign, which no longer has a particularly easy path to the nomination, raised $20 million in March, raising her total for the year to roughly $70 million. McCain, on the other hand, could only manage to bring in $15 million for the month — including just $4 million from the grassroots — moving his overall haul for 2008 to under $40 million.
In other words, McCain couldn’t raise in three months what Obama was able to raise just this past month alone (a fundraising month that actually represented a decline of more than a quarter from the previous month). Pitting McCain against Clinton, the Republican in three months took in just 70 percent of what the Democrat was able to bring in during just two months.
I’d just add that the sources of McCain’s underwhelming total are just as important.
Marc Ambinder noted, “$11m came from a spurt in the campaign’s high-dollar fundraising. $4m was raised through direct mail and Internet efforts.”
That has to be discouraging for the McCain campaign, since it means the bulk of the money — $11 million out of $15 million — came from donors the senator won’t be able to hit up for more donations later. This is in stark contrast to the Democratic candidates, who not only are raising a lot more over the same time period, but who benefit from lots of small-donor contributors who can keep donating before reaching the legal limit.
Patrick Ruffini told his fellow Republicans what they probably don’t want to hear.
As much as I don’t want to sound unhelpful, it’s time for a little tough love. If anyone thinks McCain raising $15 million in March is good news — and crucially, just $4M of it from online and direct mail — then they’re probably part of the problem rather than part of the solution. […]
[T]hey not only expect to lose the fundraising race, but intend to go down without a fight. How? By relying on the same weakened high-dollar model that fell short for every Republican candidate in the primary, and barely bothering with the untapped potential of the Internet that John McCain first discovered in 2000, and has enabled every candidate who has used it well to exceed expectations.
Maybe this news will rally GOP donors to McCain’s cause, or perhaps this will lead Republican contributors to feel dejected and focus on down-ballot races.
Either way, McCain’s fundraising has to be encouraging to Dems.