Fundraising

One of the clearest ways to show you are a serious candidate for President is to fund raise large gobs of money which you can use to bludgeon your opponents and increase your name recognition. The end of the first quarter will occur at the end of March and at that time we should get a better picture of where some of the candidates stand. We have already seen one candidate drop out because of his lack of funding...could big numbers by the top candidates cause more to drop out? We won't know the official numbers until April, but Hotline has some leaked information on what to expect. Some of the highlights:

*It appears Barack Obama raised $12 million through March 1st, with half of it coming through online donations (which would surpass Howard Dean levels of online work, especially since it is mostly unsolicitied).

*Hillary Clinton will be transferring over about $11 million from her Senate re-election fund and may report a number as high as $32 million for the first quarter, but a decent size of that apparently is already earmarked for the general election and can't be used for the primaries.

*John Edwards should keep pace with $12-$15 million. Dodd and Richardson should also report decent gains.

Many pundits are saying that it will be the 2nd Quarter (April-June) that will be the most important fundraising time, but an early start certainly helps.