John McCain raised $21.5 million in May

Our colleague Dan Morain passes along word that John McCain raised $21.5 million in May, by far his  best fundraising month. The campaign spent $11.6 million the same month, and had $1.27 million in outstanding bills. He took in $1.5 million from other politicians and political action committees, and raised $4.26 million in concert with the Republican Party. McCain ended the month with $31.5 million in the bank, an increase of $10 million from the prior month.

As impressive as that fundraising is, it likely will be far short of the numbers Barack Obama is expected to announce later today.  Obama averaged about $40 million a month in February, March and April as he fought with Hillary Clinton over the Democratic nomination -- a battle that continued through May.

The most interesting numbers won't be known for a while: how much Obama will be able to raise now that the nomination is his, and as he works to try to unify the fractured -- and fractious -- Democrats behind him.

-- Scott Martelle

Comments

[adam]

I wish that more facts went along with these money stories like how much time does each candidate spend going to fund-raisers.

[JIMMIE W BECK]

Obama has this money machine called the enternet. The money just keeps rolling in for obama to spend. And he has spent over $260 milllion dollas. And going to spend lots more..The money just keeps rolling in. PEOPLE OF AMERICAN THIS SLIP AND A SLIDDING IVY LEAGUE LAWYER HAS A TAX FOR YOU AND ME... AND WHERE NOT THE RICH. HE IS GOIING SPEND AND TAX US LIKE WE HAVE NEVER THOUGHT OF..AND A ANOTHER THING WE THE PUBLIC ARE NOW GETTING THIS NEW MRS OBAMA. COME ON, WE IS WHAT WE IS. MADISON AVENUE CANNOT MAKE A PERSON OTHER. SMOKE AND MIRRORS. SINCERELY, Jimmie w Beck

[Bob Dob]

Jimmie W. Beck, learn how to spell before making stupid, bigoted comments.

[BJ]

I always find it amusing to see how many grammatical errors these Obama-haters can commit in a single paragraph.

[Jason]

@Jimmie W Beck....please get a clue. Typing in ALL CAPITLA LETTERS DOES not make you sound more serious or more intelligent, it ijust make you look MORE STUPID.

You cite no references to the Obama policies you disagree with.

Newsflash, Oabam gets his support from citizens, McCain gets his from corporatins and lobbyists. Keep voting againt your own economic interest if it suits you. The last 8 years worked out really well for you huh?

[philosopherkingtomas]

Great idea Obama! finally we can defend ourselves and out spend the evil republicans and their swift boat liars. Obama has to defend himself from the crazies at FoxNews and Abc ! McCain is just another Bush!

[King, PA]

The new GOP fear tactic? Calling Obama a marxist or a socialist, or whatever the flavor of the month is for conservtives who can not win with issues because their positions are so out of touch and paid for by big corporations. Leave it to the loud mouth dumb rednecks to post anti-liberal rants when they do not even understand what the term means. Keep swallowing that "taxes" pill the GOP feeds you every single election....you are totally clueless.

[Here you go!!!]

Jimmie Beck...what is wrong with Mrs. Obama. I dare you to give one legitimate reason....you can't give a non=racist or sexist reason.

[soupyet]

Someone needs to check the Obama donors. Much of this money is coming from outside the USA. Consider all the corupt people he is associated with and how it is that he keeps getting more and more. I know the young Obamabots think they are responsible for the great monies but the fact is most of his money is from large donors and my guess is that when someone sends $30.00.......Obama adds money from illegals and records it as $2300.00. This guy is as sleazy as they come.

DO NOT ALLOW THE DNC TO SELECT A NOMINEE THE MAJORITY VOTED AGAINST>

Vote McCain 2008 and HILLARY 2012

[John]

It would be interesting to see how much of McCain's funding is public funding. I wish we could see where Obama's money was coming from on a case-by-case basis.

[Neal]

Dead JIMMIE W BECK, you're insane. the "enternet" has a lot of facts about McCain you should check up on. I'm not sure why you'd vote for him. Comment back. Give me some good reasons. Be sure to spell check!

[Daryl N]

I am loving all the bigots coming out of the woodwork now that *gasp* a BLACK man is probably going to be president.

A question to all the poor and middle class whites who keep voting republican:

There are two types of republicans: multi-millionaires and suckers. Which one are you?

[Kyle]

Yeah, that makes sense. Because the "majority" didn't vote for Obama, but voted for Clinton. Let's vote for McCain, who is nothing like Hillary. With logic like that, you don't deserve to vote. But, after reading the rest of your comment, logic doesn't seem to be something you possess.

[SageOldMan]

Huhm! Why is it that a link to Obama's website appears in your article but not one to Mccain's. Silly me! I thought I was reading the news and not a political advertisement. Oh, well, I should have figured it out after I saw the LA Times logo. The saving grace, for me, is that it won't be long before the Tribune corporation will be bankrupt and you will be out of a job.

[NOTE: There's no link to either campaign in this blog item.]

[soupyet]

Jason |: McCain is and always has been against lobbyists.

And for the record, it was McCain and Fiengold that worked to end the unequal monies in these campaigns by getting their bill passed. Obama has been video taped backing this bill and claiming that he would only use public monies.............as we can see Obama's word is worth nothing. Obama's word on ending the Iraq war is also worth nothing. In fact McCain will have us out of Iraq as winners while Obama will have us getting attacked here again.

Now watch as Republicans wipe Obama clear accross this counrty. The aol poll is all red today and will be close to all red in November no matter how much money Obama spends. Remember PA where he out spent Hillary 5 to 1 and lost big, or Ohio 3 to 1 and lost. Money does not decide these elections as we will see in November.

[Archer]

$21.5 million?

Aww, that's cute. ;-)

[Nick]

soupyet, I am very interested in your comments - Can you substantiate the notion that Obamas funds are coming from outside the US? If that is the case it needs to be brought to everyones attention, there is no good reason for a politician to accept money from outside the states to spend on an election.

This is extremely serious as one of the major reasons people are voting for Obama is because hes not raising money in the traditional republican way (corps and lobbyists). The republican way of raising money leaves the new president with favors to pay back. We can't have our new president paying favors to other countries at all.

To be clear: I will be voting for Obama unless I find out that he is in fact collecting money from outside the states.
If that is the case I won't be voting at all.

[RealityCheck]

Bush/McCain and the republicans continue to claim Obama is "skipping out" on public financing. 1,500,000+ donors. That's a whole lot of public financing if you ask me.

At every turn in this campaign Barack Obama continues to break records and do unprecedented things (like turning down lobbyist and PAC money, and $85 Million from the govt). He's already beginning the process of changing Washington, DC--I can't wait until January 2009 when he takes the oval office. Finally, we'll have a president that we can be proud of, and that the world will respect.

Obama '08

[Scott Harris]

Hillary in 2012, what a weirdo!

[Thomas in Oly]

Want to know where Obama gets his money? It is public info, in fact Huffingtonpost.com publishes it at

http://fundrace.huffingtonpost.com/

Obama wants to shift the teax burden from all of us to the top 2% of American, which is how it was before they created the temporary income tax to fund a world war.

[XDEM]

Not a Mr. McCain lover, but anyone but Mr. Obama. With Mrs. Clinton out you must vote for Mr. McCain. Mr. Obams says he is for change, but I do not see it. He live in a million dollar house and wears thousand dollar suits, yet tells young people to not worry about money and working for corporations. He is a socialist. Read his plans, I have in depth. They are about eliminating the middle class. Create an elite class and the rest will have to beg for scraps.
Where did my Democratic Party go, why did it leave me?

[soupyet]

Kyle: We are concerned that many people like you can not see the forest through the trees. Obama is nothing like Hillary..........and you seem to realize that more people voted for Hillary. If Hillary were the top of the ticket then Obama would have been learning. Obama on top means that sexist slander of all female candidates in the future is acceptable. That means equal rights are over for everyone. McCain is not an equal rights person but yet McCain has not made a sexist or racist comment in the campaign so far but Obama has made sexist and racist comments and actions (middle finger) the main stay of his campaign. Obama has no plans that he did not mostly copy from Hillary. On November 5th Obama will wish that he had accepted Hillary's offer to allow him to be her VP because at least then we would have won.....as things are, Obama will be another "also ran" like John Kerry and Al Gore.

VOTE McCAIN 2008 and HILLARY 2012

[Scott]

Anyone voting for McCain in 2008 and plans on voting for Hillary in 2012 is crazy. Hillary will be about as old as most of her supporters at that time, and by then none of them will be alive.
Obama 08

[Scarlete]

I find it less than amusing to see how many spelling and grammatical errors Obama's ardent supporters reflect in
their comments -- very revealing and frightening how uneducated these folks are -- ignorant fools are easily led by snake oil salesmen!

[ahmed]

I love the last few sentences on this page. But it should have said "If you are under 13 years of BRAIN age you may read this message board, and not participate in this year’s election."