Victory funds boost fundraising figures
You wouldn’t think that figuring out which presidential candidate has raised the most money would be hard to do — just see how much money is in each candidate’s campaign’s account, right?
Well, not necessarily.
Both President Barack Obama and presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney have created joint fundraising committees in an attempt to attract as much campaign cash as possible. While the most a candidate committee can receive is $5,000, these joint committees can collect a maximum of $75,800.
How is that possible?
Only $5,000 goes to the candidate’s official war chest; $30,800 goes to the Democratic National Committee or the Republican National Committee; the rest is distributed to other party committees (see chart above).
In April, Obama’s campaign raised $25.7 million, including $4.5 million that was transferred in from his joint fundraising committee. Meanwhile, Romney’s campaign raised less than half of that amount, reporting just $11.7 million in receipts to the Federal Election Commission.
But Romney campaign officials point out that April was the first month of activity by the Romney Victory Fund, his joint fundraising committee. They say the fund brought in an additional $11.4 million. How much of that will go to Romney’s campaign? His people won’t say. And the Romney Victory Fund files quarterly reports, so we won’t know for sure until July.
(Source: opensecretsdc)
