LAT: Clinton only raised $20M in Feburary

by Julia Rosen [courtesy of Calitics - Front Page]

Damn.  Now this could come back to bit her in the rear.  It turns out that the $35 million figure included $10 million from her Senate account and the $5 million loan she gave the campaign.  Not to mention the $3.7 million she owes people.  Dan Morain dropped the bombshell in this LAT story.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) was second in fundraising. She collected $34.6 million in February, pushing her total to $173.8 million. That includes $10 million from her Senate campaign account and a $5-million personal loan. Clinton owes consultants and other vendors an additional $3.7 million.

While that is well above the $11 million McCain raised, it is well below the $55 million Obama raking in during the same time period.  She heavily promoted the amount she brought in and the discovery of the potency of online fundraising.  Since then we have seen her do goal based asks, with a version of a thermometer and other well known fundraising techniques.

So she had $20 million less to spend (not deducting her debts) than Barack Obama and only $20 million of it was really raised that month.  The rest were transfers and loans.  I wonder if this will turn into a negative news cycle as people reflect back on the claims made when she first announced these numbers.  There was nothing in the reports that indicated that a huge chunk of it came from her Senate account.  Indeed they were highlighting the small donor online contributions.  MSNBC

In their call to fundraisers, Clinton's advisers announced that the campaign had raised the money from 300,000 donors, including 200,000 new contributors, most of them donating through the Internet. Aides said almost all the money was for the primary election

The $20 million figure makes sense, given the number of donors she cited.  Divide that by 300,000 donations and that gives you an average of $66.67 per contribution.  (Obama's average for February was $75.56, given that he raised $55M from 727,972)