Opinion: Tick-tock, tick-tock: The campaigns count their 90-day take

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

Well, here it is, one minute before the midnight deadline for third-quarter fundraising (in the Pacific time zone anyway), and already some numbers are beginning to leak out.

Look for more in the coming hours as both parties’ presidential candidates seek to cast their money-gathering in the most favorable light. Without any votes yet, beyond nonbinding straws, counting dollars is the only public way of measuring concrete candidate support.

Bill Richardson’s folks obviously thought that late on an early-autumn Sunday was the best for them. They’re out first so there’s no one with a vastly larger sum to compare his to yet. And his $5.2 million doesn’t seem too bad.

It gives him about $18 million raised so far this year, ahead of several candidates but still way behind Barack Obama’s $58.5 million in the first six months of 2007, which leads all candidates in both parties.

That $5.2 million could close Richardson’s money gap with John Edwards, who said the other day he would accept public financing. A sign of financial weakness, if not desperation, Edwards sought to spin the decision as a challenge to fellow Democrats, most of whom will not want to then have to abide by public financing’s spending limits.

Campaigns have until Oct. 15 to officially report their funds, but many will be releasing figures beforehand. Richardson spokesman Tom Reynolds sought to use the sum to vault his boss out of the lower tier of candidates. ‘We continue to count contributions as they come in throughout the day,’ he said, ‘but this figure obviously separates us from the second-tier candidates and makes this a four-person race.’

He hopes.

No other candidates--top-tier or lower-rung--released their money figures tonight. The third quarter, which includes summer vacations, is traditionally a time of low political interest and is typically the hardest to raise money in. But if the same 2007 pattern continues, Obama and Hillary Clinton will lead the Democratic pack in fundraising, while Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani will outraise their Republican competitors, with Romney likely writing himself another check.

Perhaps revealingly, the Richardson campaign did not announce its cash-on-hand figure, the actual amount of cash after debts it will have to spend in the final three months leading up to Iowa and New Hampshire.

Obama’s camp did choose to announce--and therefore highlight--one figure: that it had surpassed its three-quarter goal of acquiring 350,000 individual donors so far this year. That means at least 100,000 new contributors since June 30, no insubstantial figure but fewer new contributors than he gathered in the second quarter.

The 100,000 new donors is about the same as Obama garnered in the first quarter, when he raised $25.7 million, according to the Associated Press. The Times’ Dan Morain will be following the emerging figures closely on these pages. Tonight, he’s got a story on Clinton’s last fundraiser of the quarter, a day in the Bay area where convicted felon Norman Hsu was to play a prominent role. He couldn’t make it, however, because he’s now in jail.

--Andrew Malcolm