Pat Dollard | Young Americans

Politico:

Barack Obama’s campaign is on track to raise another $30 million in February, sources close to the Illinois senator say, while Hillary Rodham Clinton’s spokesman revealed Wednesday that she had loaned her campaign $5 million.

Insiders in both campaigns say the growing financial disparity virtually ensures that Obama will be able to significantly outspend Clinton in the critical primaries to come.

Even before all the Super Tuesday votes were counted, Obama began airing advertisements in Nebraska, Virginia, the District of Columbia, Maryland and Maine — the next round of primary and caucus states — before Clinton did.

His campaign has raised $2.2 million in less than 24 hours, sources say.

“Obama’s financial superiority is straining the Clinton campaign at this point. That’s reflected in how he spread the field on her in Super Tuesday. His ability to advertise in more states than she did, to put more resources on the ground than she did,” gave Obama an edge, said Anthony Corrado, an expert on campaign finance at Colby College.

The continuing infusion of cash will allow Obama to remain a step ahead of Clinton as the primary map shifts to states where he has some built-in advantages and more time to interact with voters who are less familiar with him than with the New York senator.

Bill Burton, an Obama spokesman, cautioned that the fundraising pace may slip and downplayed talk of another $30 million month.

“We’re obviously pleased with the amount of grass-roots support that we have, but it’s way too early to be making predictions like that,” he said.

Even so, an extraordinary February seems less far-fetched coming on the heels of a stunning January.

The Obama camp reported last week that it raised $32 million last month. The Clinton campaign reported raising $14 million, and it is unclear if that includes the Clintons’ personal loan.

And, according to the Obama campaign, only 3 percent of his donors have given the maximum $2,300 donation for the primary.

That means he can go back to the vast majority of his supporters, over and over again, and ask them to send another check.

Indeed, the strength of the Obama fundraising machine from the outset was based on its unusual recruitment and reliance on small donors.

According to a study by The Campaign Finance Institute, a nonpartisan organization that tracks political giving, only about a third of the donors who gave Obama $200 or more had given the maximum.

In contrast, Clinton raised about half of her money from donors who gave the maximum.

More striking, the report found that nearly half of Obama’s individual contributors in the fourth quarter of 2007 gave donations of $200 or less — amounts so small that the Federal Election Commission doesn’t even demand the givers be named on disclosure reports.

According to the campaign, that pattern continued in January. Of the thousands of Internet donations Obama received, 90 percent amounted to less than $100 each. Ten thousand people gave between $5 and $10.

In January alone, the Obama campaign raised more than $28 million from Internet donations, more than the entire amount raised by the groundbreaking Internet-based campaign of Howard Dean in 2004.

The infusion of money “is testament to the grass-roots support we have from all over the country and shows a financial sustainability that the other campaigns don’t appear to have,” said Burton.

The Clinton campaign is acutely aware of the risks posed by the Obama financial juggernaut.

Spokesman Howard Wolfson said Wednesday that Clinton loaned her campaign money to illustrate her “commitment to this effort and to ensuring that our campaign has the resources it needs to compete and win across this nation.”

The campaign sent out an appeal for cash as soon as Clinton began pocketing big victories on Super Tuesday.

It’s also working to elevate the presence of its website — and its online giving features.

One of the major advantages of Internet donations is that it doesn’t cost a campaign much money to raise them.

More traditional fundraising activities, such as hotel gatherings and direct mail, are not as efficient.

The calendar does have some bright spots for Clinton. The slower pace between contests will allow time for her to fly to big fundraisers in California and New York, even as she taps the pockets of donors in big upcoming primary states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania.

“We’re going to have more than enough resources to do what we need to do,” said spokesman Phil Singer.

But Corrado cautioned that Clinton’s fundraising appeals will be delivered at the same time that Obama could be capturing primary titles in Virginia, Louisiana and Maryland.

“She has a calendar now that does not favor her. This will be a real test of the loyalty and enthusiasm of the Clinton fundraising base,” he said.