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Has the economy improved over the last three quarters?  Not for Barack Obama and the DNC.  The last quarter of fundraising in 2011 brought in a combined total of $68 million, the lowest of the three reporting quarters last year for both: President Obama’s reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee raised a combined $68 million in the last quarter of 2011, campaign manager Jim Messina said in a video e-mailed to supporters on Thursday morning.The Obama campaign raised $42 million, while the DNC raised the remaining $24 million. Those numbers track closely to third-quarter hauls of $43 million and $27 million,...

As the Republican presidential candidates traipse through the early primary and caucus states, President Obama and Vice President Biden are keeping a tight focus on a handful of swing states that are among the biggest prizes in the 2012 general election contest. Obama and Biden are keeping an official travel schedule that conveniently plunks them in battleground states that may decide the election. Biden will head to Ohio on Thursday to talk about a bread-and-butter issue for the middle class: making college more affordable. On Friday, he’ll appear in the Philadelphia suburbs for a similar speech. Winning Ohio and Pennsylvania,...

Republicans do not need to nominate a candidate anytime soon. On the contrary, if they want to beat President Obama, they should take their time before settling on a nominee. In January of 2010, Harry Reid looked like a “dead man walking” politically. Fourteen percent of Nevadans were unemployed, and he was having a hard time getting above 43 percent in most polls. There was only one way he could win: destroy his Republican opponent before he or she ever got out of the blocks. [snip] Ending the primary season early simply allows Team Obama more time to focus their...

Friend -- These Republican candidates spent in some cases more than a year -- in Mitt Romney's case seven years -- campaigning in Iowa to be the next president. But tonight, GOP voters there couldn't decisively get behind anyone. Who exactly leads the Republican race going forward isn't clear, but we do know two things: 1) The extremist Tea Party agenda won a clear victory. No matter who the Republicans nominate, we'll be running against someone who has embraced that agenda in order to win -- vowing to let Wall Street write its own rules, end Medicare as we know...

President Barack Obama’s campaign manager Jim Messina sent out an official reelection campaign video wherein he said talk of Mr. Obama having a billion dollar campaign war chest is “bullsh*t” because “we don’t take PAC money unlike our opponents. We fund this campaign in contributions of $3 or $5 or whatever you can do to help us....

President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign has raised $64,462 from Aspen area donors this year, slightly more than all of the Republican primary candidates combined, according to campaign finance information at opensecrets.org. Out of the candidates vying to win the GOP nomination, Texas Gov. Rick Perry is far outpacing his rivals with a total of $45,000 in local donations. Republican candidates Jon Huntsman, Ron Paul, Tim Pawlenty and Mitt Romney also have picked up some Roaring Fork Valley dollars. Combined with Perry’s cash, the GOP haul as of Dec. 18 was $63,602. Much of Perry’s local donations came from a fundraiser...

This morning the Cain campaign blasted out a fundraising e-mail that included these passages: I am excited to share a recent Rasmussen (conducted November 21-22) which shows me retaking the lead nationally with 26 percent support. I am leading Governor Romney and Speaker Gingrich by 3 and 12 percent respectively. … Please donate $25, $50, $100, $500, $1000 or more today to my campaign for President. While I lead my fellow GOP candidates in the national polls, I trail them in one important category: Money. A reader e-mailed me to point out that in fact, this particular Rasmussen poll was...

Presidential candidate Herman Cain is “in it to win it,” according to newly released financial numbers. The Herman Cain Campaign reports receiving over $9 million of financial support from Cain backers since October 1st. Twenty-five percent of these newly received contributions have come in the last ten days. The generosity of Mr. Cain’s followers has more than doubled in the past five weeks, compared to the financial gifts received in the previous two quarters combined. According to the campaign’s third quarter FEC filing, Mr. Cain’s campaign received $4.7 million from May through September 30th. The campaign has received a total...

(CNN) - Republican presidential contender Herman Cain will address the latest sexual harassment allegations against him at a Tuesday afternoon news conference, his campaign announced late Monday.

Actor Alec Baldwin has launched a war of tweets with Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos Baldwin's bombastic twitter attacks on Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos has given the Republicans a perfect foil to use to solicit campaign funds--a liberal Hollywood elite actor who wants to raise taxes. "Don't think we haven't thought of that," a Senate GOP source said when asked if Baldwin will be the focus of a fund-raising effort. Even Democrats were scratching their heads over why Baldwin took a one-day story and kept it going. "What Alec Baldwin is doing is making Dean Skelos a man of...

Texas Gov. Rick Perry may have slipped badly in recent weeks of polling, but he's doing the best of any Republican presidential candidate attracting political contributions from females. According to a new study by the Center for Responsive Politics, Perry is receiving a little more than a third of his donations (33.5%) above $200 from women. Former Sen. Rick Santorum is second with 32.3%. About 27.5% of all political contributions to Republican presidential candidates have come from women, according to the Center study.

Washington (CNN) – Herman Cain's campaign says it raised more than $400,000 on Monday, a "clear vote of confidence from his supporters," after the story broke alleging he had been accused of sexual harassment while head of the National Restaurant Association. "In the last 24 hours, the Friends of Herman Cain campaign has had the single best day of fundraising since the start of the campaign," Mark Block, Cain's chief of staff, said Tuesday night. Block said Monday's donations, both online and by phone, doubled the normal daily average in Cain's campaign to become the Republican presidential nominee.

WASHINGTON — Fewer than one in 10 of the top fundraisers who helped George W. Bush shatter records for presidential campaign money in 2000 and 2004 have donated to Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s 2012 presidential campaign, a Houston Chronicle analysis of Federal Election Commission data has found. Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney holds a wide lead over other GOP presidential hopefuls in donations received from the 939 “Pioneers” and “Rangers” who raised at least $100,000 each for the Bush presidential efforts. Romney has received 148 donations totaling $351,250 from Bush’s top money people, compared with Perry’s 87 contributions worth $213,000...

Two sources within the Cain campaign are telling me that although Mr. Cain was hit with sexual harassment accusations in the 90's from two females who worked for him, when he was president of the National Restaurant Association, Monday's online campaign fundraising for the campaign was the best ever up to this point. Human Events is reporting that Cain Campaign Manager Mark Block says the campaign raised $250,000 in online donatinos in one day. However, one Cain campaign source confirmed to me that the fundraising for Monday is well over $300,000.

Heard him say it on the Laura Ingraham radio show.

The entire paid New Hampshire staff for Republican presidential candidate Michele Bachmann has resigned... Jeff Chidester, Bachmann's former NewHampshire campaign director, confirmed the mass exodus. "The New Hampshire team has quit," he said. "We'll issue a joint statement as to our reasons why." Chidester's confirmation, made via email and voice mail to National Journal and CBS, followed a confusing day in which Bachmann insisted that reports of the staff departures were untrue. But Chidester said he left last week and informed "people that are closest to Michele." ...One of the aides who quit, Caroline Gilger, Bachmann's southern state field director,...

Mitt Romney's campaign just announced its third-quarter fundraising number: $14.2 million, which is about what early reports had indicated. That's a solid quarter, but the number that stands out is the $14.7 million Romney reportedly had in the bank at the end of September. That's less than the $15 million Rick Perry's campaign says it will report having in reserve. Continue Reading The difference is small and could be really minimal, depending on how the two campaigns are rounding. But it's still notable given that Romney had a four-month head start. Romney's burn rate has also increased since last quarter....

EXCLUSIVE: Republican White House hopeful Rick Perry raised over $17 million in 49 days, DRUDGE has learned. $347,000 per day; 20,000 unique donors from all 50 states, DC, Puerto Rico, and Guam. With more than half of donors living outside of Texas... Developing...

Those words were spoken today by Georgette Mosbacher, RNC Finance Co-Chair and huge GOP fundraiser, after Chris Christie’s announcement. The “we” is all the big bundlers, fundraisers, and money folks who have been sitting on the sidelines waiting for the field to be set — and that quote represents the coalescing around Mitt Romney that is expected to happen rather quickly now. Mosbacher went on to say: “I think tomorrow, we’ll be contacting one another and probably put something together with Romney… And I would say that the race is now Romney and Obama. Quite frankly, the enthusiasm wasn’t there...

WASHINGTON, Oct 4 (Reuters) - At least one well-heeled backer of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie shifted support to former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney on Tuesday after Christie declined to join the Republican U.S. presidential race, and others are expected to follow. After Christie's announcement, Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone signed up with the Romney camp, according to the campaign. Langone, industrialist David Koch and hedge fund giant Paul Singer were among the elite fund-raisers who implored the Christie to seek the Republican nomination to run against President Barack Obama in 2012.

Sacramento -- Attorneys representing the alleged victims in a suspected fraud scheme involving millions of dollars in campaign funds from as many as 400 candidates, officeholders and committees asked the commission that oversees political fundraising in California to make urgent changes in regulations to ensure funding for their political work. The Fair Political Practices Commission held a special meeting Friday to hear from clients of Kinde Durkee, a campaign treasurer for the hundreds of politicians and political organizations, nearly all of them Democratic. Durkee was arrested Sept. 2 by the FBI and charged with stealing or misappropriating $670,000 from the...

Let's get the weekend off to a smiling start with this rib-tickler, courtesy Joe Biden. In a fundraising email I just received from the Obama campaign website [of whose email list of course I'm a proud member], good old Joe claimed, with a straight cyber-face: "This has never been about Barack and me. "We're just two guys. We're just two guys." More after the jump.

Reporting from New York— The race is on to tap one of the most vital sources of campaign cash — Wall Street — and the early results are not looking good for President Obama. The president's campaign struggled this week to sell out a fundraising dinner Friday at Manhattan's gilded Four Seasons restaurant despite its being hosted by America's No. 1 capitalist, Warren Buffett, according to people close to the campaign who were not authorized to speak publicly. The dinner for 100 was also a relative bargain at $10,000 a plate; recent fundraisers in Hollywood and New York have gone...

Cannot excerpt Bloomberg article due to their restrictions. However, you can read the story HERE. Gist of write-up: Romney and Perry are at competing fundraisers this evening. The RINO is in New York picking up loads of cash from Zero's Wall Street donors who helped the Wee Wee get into office and now have buyers remorse. The Gov is in Dee Cee raking in dough from conservative southerners. All three sides (Rick, Slick and Obozo) have their spin machines kicked into overdrive.

Texas Gov. Rick Perry’s recent stumbles — his rambling attempt at last week’s GOP presidential debate to attack former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s flip-flopping is a prime example — have renewed speculation that New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie might rethink his “no go” decision on the 2012 race. Even as some Republican donors make the case — again — that this is Christie’s moment, his closest advisers insist that nothing has changed, pointing to comments he made last week at New Jersey’s Rider University in which he said he still isn’t interested. Of course, at that same event, Indiana Gov....

Now, Democrats Want Solyndra Backers to TestifyBy MATTHEW L. WALD September 23, 2011, 1:46 pm **SNIP** Now the Democrats are asking for testimony from two private equity firms: Argonaut, which represents the interests of George Kaiser, a billionaire oilman who was a fund-raising “bundler” for the Obama presidential campaign, and Madrone, which invests money for the Walton family, heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune and prominent Republican donors. Those two firms, as investors in Solyndra, stepped forward in February with others to provide additional money to the company after the Energy Department loans. Under that deal, they get priority in repayment...

President Barack Obama will raise money in early October with a Missouri businessman whose company benefited from a $107 million federal tax credit to develop a wind power facility in his state. Tom Carnahan, a scion of Missouri’s most prominent Democratic political family, is listed on Obama’s campaign website as a host of a $25,000-per-person fundraiser to be held in St. Louis on October 4. His energy development firm, Wind Capital Group, was helped by a sizable credit authorized in the stimulus, for an energy project in northwest Missouri.

Born in Montreal, the Hebron, Ky.-native Rep. Geoff Davis comes off as a passionate, prickly conservative in his fourth term. Davis serves on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee and is fast becoming known for focusing on the need to restrain government overreach and keep regulators accountable. [ ... ] In the last Congress, Davis introduced the REINS act, which aims to force up-or-down congressional votes on future major regulations. Davis’s name is likely one you will hear more and more as Americans wake up to the reality of regulatory excess. His votes have earned him a 92-percent rating...

Democratic Party fundraising slumps in AugustREUTERS/Kevin Lamarque updated 9/11/2011 12:17:41 AM ET **SNIP** Both the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and President Barack Obama's re-election campaign were forced to curtail fundraising during the summer because of the negotiations with congressional Republicans over raising the debt limit, which led Obama to cancel fundraisers around the country. **SNIP** Democratic Party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who led her first full committee meeting, said the party needs to rally behind Obama's $447 billion jobs plan aimed at jump-starting the economy and hiring, as well as his own re-election prospects. "There is only one job the...

<p>SAN FRANCISCO — Texas Gov. Rick Perry attracted new supporters during his first presidential campaign road trip through California with the provocative talk that enrages his opponents, such as his description of Social Security as a Ponzi scheme.</p> <p>Perry’s blunt language on Social Security is “absolutely part of his appeal,” Floyd Kvamme, a venture capitalist and former adviser to President Ronald Reagan, said Friday outside an East Palo Alto fundraiser. “It’s plain-spokenness. It’s his realism. The fact of the matter is … it’s broken.”</p>

A winery owner, a tech executive and venture capitalists are among the Texas governor's local backersWant to meet Rick Perry? The Republican governor from Texas will be at the Four Seasons in East Palo Alto for a $1,000-a-plate fundraiser on Friday during his first trip to the Bay Area since declaring his candidacy for president. Perry's campaign says the GOP candidate has no public appearances scheduled for the region. He has a packed schedule, with three fundraisers on Thursday (in San Diego, Orange County and Los Angeles) and three more on Friday (in Bakersfield, Fresno and East Palo Alto). But...

While Bob Dylan wrote, “No one can sing the blues like Blind Willie McTell,� it can be said, “No president can prolong the blues like Barack Obama.� He must be a glutton for punishment – why else would his campaign pick the House of Blues to raise money? On September 26, Obama will make two stops in Los Angeles, first at the House of Blues, and later at a tony restaurant where donors will plop down a cool $35,800 to attend, Bloomberg reports.  Don’t you have $35,800 just lying around?  If so, the president would like to meet you.

WASHINGTON - Mitt Romney's loss is Rick Perry's gain in the 2012 Republican presidential race, as the Texas governor, a late starter in the wide-open Republican presidential field, is not only stealing support but also big-money backers from the former GOP front-runner. Just look at California. Four years ago, Mike Schroeder was California political director of Mitt Romney's presidential campaign. This year, he dismisses Romney's second White House campaign as "disorganized." "A lot of the energy that was for Romney has gone to Perry this time around,'' said Schroeder, who has not formally endorsed a candidate. Former California assemblyman Scott...

The presidential motorcade on Martha's Vineyard peeled out of Blue Heron Farms at 5:15 p.m. with the president and Valerie Jarrett in tow. After 10 minutes, we made an abrupt left turn on John Cottle Road — an unpaved, deeply rutted eight-foot-wide private path hemmed in by ivy, scrub oak and big, scary boulders. After bottoming out four times — we're talking two-foot holes in a sand-and-gravel road, along with one hairpin turn — Obama and Jarrett arrived at the West Tisbury home of their friends Brian and Aileen Roberts, spokesman Josh Earnest informs us. It was 5:30 p.m. Roberts...

Dozens of Wall Street executives who supported President Obama in 2008 have donated to Mitt Romney's presidential campaign this year. According to a review of fundraising data, 67 people who work in the financial sector and live in the New York City metro area gave to Obama in 2008 and the former Massachusetts governor in 2011. The reversals come in the wake of Obama's tough rhetoric on Wall Street, most notably last year when the president was pushing Congress to pass what became known as the Dodd-Frank law. The 67 individuals who live in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Democratic party's fundraising slowed in July, hurt by the cancellation of events headlined by President Barack Obama as he negotiated a debt ceiling deal with Republicans. The Democratic National Committee raised $6.7 million in July, including $2.2 million for the Obama Victory Fund, a joint fundraising account by the DNC and Obama's campaign. The Republican National Committee raised $6.1 million during the month. Summertime is typically a slow period for political money as many donors are on vacation and few events are held. July was the DNC's lowest monthly amount since Obama launched his re-election campaign...

Ask Republican lobbyists or operatives who Rick Perry’s K Street boosters are, and some variation of “I don’t really know” is likely to roll off their tongues. Unlike some of its predecessors, Perry’s nascent presidential campaign counts only a handful of influential rainmakers among its supporters. And, so far, little evidence indicates that Washington will become the kind of fundraising power center for Perry that it is for rival GOP contender Mitt Romney. In the White House cash dash, the Texas governor’s much-feared fundraising machine seems to view Washington more as a rest stop than a destination. “I’m not...

Some Democratic members of the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction, tasked with identifying $1.5 trillion in spending cuts, have become the subject of criticism, but their appointments were only finalized Thursday. Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, and Reps. James Clyburn of South Carolina and Xavier Becerra of California are already being targeted for circumstances that could compromise their abilities to negotiate. Becerra, for example, wasted no time before using his appointment as a fundraising tool for his own campaign.

Rep. Xavier Becerra — or, to be more precise, lobbyists working on his behalf — wasted no time Thursday capitalizing on the California congressman’s appointment to the congressional super committee. A little over two hours after Becerra was named to the powerful panel, Investment Company Institute’s Jim Hart sent out an email encouraging attendance for the trade group’s upcoming $1,500 per person fundraiser based on Becerra’s new found status as one of the elite 12. “We will host an event for Congressman Xavier Becerra, not only Vice Chairman of the Democratic Caucus but also who has just been named to...

WASHINGTON (AP) — A once-mysterious donor who gave $1 million to a pro-Mitt Romney political action committee in April contributed the maximum amount to Romney's presidential campaign three weeks later, an Associated Press review found. Edward Conard came forward this weekend as the man behind the donation from New York firm W Spann LLC, founded shortly before giving the $1 million check to Romney-leaning Restore Our Future PAC. W Spann dissolved three months later, business records show, prompting outrage from campaign-finance watchdogs who said the secret contribution violated the law. Conard is a former executive at Boston-based Bain Capital, which...

The Federal Election Commission and the Justice Department have been asked by two Washington, D.C. watchdog groups to investigate possible violations of campaign finance law by a company they suspect was created to funnel $1 million to a Super PAC operated by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney’s campaign staffers. A complaint by the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 is outlined in a letter asking the FEC and Justice to “formally investigate” the activities of W Spann LLC for possible violations of a ban on making contributions in the name of another and for failing to organize and register as...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Trying to make up lost time, President Barack Obama plunged back into the search for money for his re-election campaign Wednesday with a coast-to-coast series of parties marking his 50th birthday after he was forced to cancel fundraisers because of the debt-ceiling crisis. Lowering expectations, Obama's campaign said it would raise tens of millions of dollars less this summer than it did last spring because it had to scrap 10 fundraisers headlined by Obama and others in California, New York and elsewhere and now faces a sluggish time of the year to raise campaign cash. Obama completed...

After Rep. Allen West left the House floor today, lying leftist hack Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz attacked him and lied about the Republican plan. A disgruntled Allen West sent out this response to the vile DNC chair. Via the Politico: From: Z112 West, Allen Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2011 04:48 PM To: Wasserman Schultz, Debbie Cc: McCarthy, Kevin; Blyth, Jonathan; Pelosi, Nancy; Cantor, Eric Subject: Unprofessional and Inappropriate Sophomoric Behavior from Wasserman-SchultzLook, Debbie, I understand that after I departed the House floor you directed your floor speech comments directly towards me. Let me make myself perfectly clear, you want...

.....Multiple Republican sources tell NH Journal that Perry is calling top-shelf Republican leaders in the Granite State. One Republican state Senator who received a call from the Governor confirmed that he has been discussing his entry into the presidential sweepstakes with leading state Republicans for the past few days. .....Should he decide to run, Perry is viewed as a serious competitor who could shake up the race. Perry is a fiscal and social conservative with tea party ties and a strong fundraising base.

As Jim Antle noted earlier, second-quarter fundraising ended June 30 and, while Federal Election Commission reports aren't due until June 15, GOP presidential campaigns are already reporting their numbers. Atlanta businessman Herman Cain's campaign issued this press release late Friday: Cain Previews First Financial Filings (Stockbridge, GA) - Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain today released an overview of his first campaign finance report, in advance of the reporting deadline of July 15. While many candidates started with significant funding prior to the official launch of their campaigns, Cain's operations started with $0 and have raised more than $2.46 million. The...

Former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain is a grassroots sensation on the 2012 presidential campaign trail. Now we know what that looks like as a dollar figure: Cain brought in $2.46 million in campaign contributions, a number the campaign tells TPM it expects to see rise to closer to $2.48 when all the final reporting is done. "It's not Mitt Romney money, it's not [President] Obama money, but we're excited," spokesperson Ellen Carmichael told TPM late Friday night. Cain, wealthy from his experience running Godfather's as well as other successful business enterprises, has put in some of his own cash...

Campaigning like it was 2008, Barack Obama’s political team raced to collect every possible dollar before Thursday’s midnight deadline in hopes of turning the first meaningful fundraising report of 2012 into a show of force. There was campaign manager Jim Messina urging the faithful to help the president hit a record-breaking $60 million in combined Obama-DNC contributions. “If you’re planning on donating to this campaign at any point in the next 16 months…do it now,” he wrote about 12 hours before the critical second-quarter filing deadline.

Michelle Obama went to Boston for $600,000. the Boston Globe spoke glowingly of her words of praise for President Obama. But it was the last paragraph of the piece that was most telling. From the Boston Globe: “Yet while [Elaine] Schuster spoke from typed notes, the first lady used a TelePrompTer, despite the relatively small and friendly audience.” These birdbrains cannot get through a simple speech at a social gathering without a teleprompter. Goodness, he needed two just to speak to a sixth-grade class and he needed one for his first press conference. So here are the words Michelle Obama...

MIAMI, Fla. -- A low-dollar fundraiser here Monday felt like a throwback to the 2008 campaign. There was the same old soundtrack – including “City of Blinding Lights” by U2, the president’s 2008 anthem -- the enthusiastic organizers and the abundant appeals for supporters to rally behind President Obama. The one missing element? Overflowing crowds. Granted, it was a fundraiser, not a free rally. But the empty seats were hard to miss.

America’s got a fee-vah and the only prescription is … Mitt Romney? The all-but-declared Republican presidential contender, who has kept his head low for much of the year as he collected cash, raised $10.25 million in a single day Monday after bringing together his network of wealthy donors to dial for dollars in a city with no shortage of them. It’s a hefty one-day total that Romney’s team hopes will show his strength in the emerging GOP field…During his 2008 run for the GOP nomination, Romney used more than $40 million of his own money to pay for campaigns in...