Americas

Americas

Obama campaign raises $29 mln in January

17 February 2012 22:15 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. U.S. President Barack Obama raised 29.1 million dollars in January for his re-election campaign and the Democratic Party, his campaign announced Friday, APA reports quoting Xinhua.

The number once again dwarfed the president’s Republican challengers in terms of fundraising capability. It also raised Obama’s total fundraising in this election cycle to about 250 million dollars.

The president continued to show his ability to attract small donors, with 98 percent of the donations in January for 250 dollars or less, according to his campaign.

Obama received 48 percent of his total haul in 2011 from individual donors contributing 200 dollars or less, the Campaign Finance Institute said in a study last week.

That stood in contrast to the GOP field. Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, for instance, raised 56.3 million dollars from all donors in 2011, with only 9 percent coming from small donors.

The 2012 presidential campaign is expected to be the most expensive one in the U.S. history as a previous Supreme Court ruling loosened restrictions on outside spending -- most importantly those spent by the so-called super-PACs (political action committees) -- in presidential campaigns.

Obama had long been criticizing the super PACs but reversed course recently to encourage donations to a super-PAC that is backing him. His campaign defended the move saying the president can not be unilaterally disarmed when conservative groups have already started attacking Democrats with huge super-PAC spending.

Obama collected a total of 750 million dollars in the 2008 presidential campaign, and is eyeing one billion dollars this cycle.