Bush, Kerry Set Campaign Fund-Raising Records

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Bush, Kerry Set Campaign Fund-Raising Records

Thu May 20, 6:20 PM ET By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Bush 's re-election campaign has spent nearly $130 million but with a record $200 million raised, he still has $71.5 million cash on hand and more money coming in, the campaign said on Thursday.

Democratic challenger John Kerry reported raising a total of $115 million, more than $30 million of which was taken in during a 20-city tour last month. The Kerry campaign pointed out the $115 million broke Bush's 2000 record of $100 million for a nonincumbent running for president. <snip>

The Kerry campaign said it had over $28 million cash on hand as of April 30. It said that at the beginning of March 2003, the Bush campaign enjoyed a cash-on-hand advantage of 55 to 1, but in just two months, Kerry had closed the gap to about 2.5 to 1. <snip>

Bush has stopped headlining fund-raising events on his own behalf and has switched to raising money for Republican Party candidates in the Nov. 2 election.

Even so, the Bush campaign raised another $15.6 million in April, $10.9 million of it coming from direct mail and phone contributions. <snip>

This is becoming a fun race as one reads of Nancy Pelosi saying yesterday "I think the time has come to speak very frankly about the lack of leadership in the White House, the lack of judgment. People say that the president has great resolve, and they admire that. But resolve must be accompanied by judgment and with a plan to succeed. In the case of Iraq, it was not....(Bush's actions on Iraq) "demonstrate an incompetence in terms of knowledge, judgment, and experience in making the decisions that would have been necessary to truly accomplish the mission without the deaths to our troops and the cost to our taxpayers." and the GOP's Neal Boortz saying of Bush "if it were not for his fondness for tax cuts, and his pursuit, however flawed, of the ongoing war on terror, I can't for the life of me think of a good reason to vote for George Bush this November."


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Candidates tout fundraising successes
Kerry cites April total; Bush gets 1 million donors
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By Frank James
Washington Bureau

May 21, 2004

WASHINGTON -- Both the Republican and Democratic campaigns for the White House claimed victory in the political money wars on Thursday.

President Bush's team said his campaign was the first to raise donations from more than 1 million donors. Sen. John Kerry's campaign said he raised $30million in April, nearly twice the $15.6 million raised by the Bush-Cheney operation. The money raised by the Bush campaign pushed Bush's total to a record $200 million.

On a day devoted to campaign finance reports, top Kerry aides contended that their candidate, like a prizefighter who shakes off an opponent's best punch, had weathered a pricey onslaught of mostly negative ads from the GOP campaign, emerging in much better shape than the Massachusetts Democrat's team had expected.<snip>


A Fox News/Opinion Dynamics poll of 900 registered voters conducted Tuesday and Wednesday showed Bush and Kerry each with 40 percent of the respondents.<snip>