Politics

Obama’s March fundraising snags $53 million

Neil Munro White House Correspondent
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Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on Monday dismissed President Barack Obama’s March fundraising haul of $53 million.

“My first reaction was that they were behind” their goals, Priebus told reporters.

Still, Priebus expects Obama to raise a lot of money by November.

“The only thing that this president is pretty good at is raising money,” he said, adding that Republicans “are working hard to keep up with the ‘campaigner-in-chief.’”

Obama’s campaign raised $53 million in cooperation with the Democratic National Committee. That’s only slightly more than the amount raised in March 2008, when Obama’s campaign raised $42.8 million and the DNC raised $5.9 million.

However, the month’s haul suggests the campaign will likely reach its 2008 total of $760 million, but not the $1 billion touted by some of its supporters. Obama has raised roughly $200 million so far.

But the campaign is also spending a lot of money to build its infrastructure, including many offices and voter-registration teams in swing-states.

For example, the campaign raised $21 million in February, but spent roughly $12 million on various tasks. That left the campaign with $84.7 million in the bank at the end of February, up only $8.7 million from the $76 million it held at the end of January.

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