Barack Obama is the choice of free-agent donors

Obama has received twice as much money as Hillary Clinton has from donors who supported other candidates in the Democratic race.


Campaign donors who previously backed also-ran Democratic candidates have adopted Sen. Barack Obama as their second choice, preferring Obama by a ratio of nearly 3 to 1 over Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and giving him twice as much money.

Obama has collected more than $2 million to Clinton's $900,000 from donors who once backed former Sen. John Edwards and other Democrats who have dropped out, a Times analysis of Federal Election Commission records shows.

Money imbalanceThe money flowed in February and March from people like Kevin Jennings.

For the first time in his 44 years, Jennings has gotten involved in a national campaign. He volunteered for Edwards in South Carolina, and hosted him at his Manhattan apartment, raising more than $100,000. When Edwards quit the race, Jennings was devastated.

"It felt like a family member had died," Jennings said.

After a mourning period, Jennings, a former teacher and a founder of a group that tries to help schools protect gay and lesbian students from harassment, stepped back into the fray. Public attention focuses on which candidate attracts superdelegates and primary votes. But there also has been a far less public competition between Obama and Clinton for the moneyed backers of their former rivals.

People who raise money for Clinton and Obama tell of soliciting friends who had backed the other candidates. Some donors to Edwards and the others said they had received calls from backers of the remaining candidates. In many instances, however, the donors needed no prompting.

"This is an unbelievably important election," Jennings said, who co-hosted an event that raised $170,000 for Obama.

Obama's success at attracting the donors of the also-ran Democrats underscores a phenomenon apparent throughout the Democratic primary: Many Democrats take an "Anybody but Clinton" view.

"She is the establishment candidate, and for a lot of these people she is worse than that," San Jose State University political scientist Larry N. Gerston said. "They're saying 'The enemy of my enemy is my friend.' By going with Obama, they are perpetuating the possibility that it is ABC -- anybody but Clinton."

"I guess it is impolite to talk about it, but she has much more baggage than he does," said Denver attorney Amy Robertson, 47, who had given $2,300 to Edwards and more recently donated $2,300 to Obama. "It was not a tough call."

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