For Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, it was a monumental achievement: Her campaign announced in April that she had raised $26 million in the first quarter of the year, more than any other presidential candidate.

The tally was especially important because it nudged her past Senator Barack Obama, whose campaign reported a surprisingly strong $25.7 million, and allowed her to claim victory in the “money primary” that is widely viewed as an early test of endurance in the Democratic race for the presidential nomination.

But like a certain home run record, Mrs. Clinton’s big numbers might require an asterisk.

Her campaign has since had to subtract hundreds of thousands of dollars from its first-quarter total because of a variety of problems, including donors whose credit cards were mistakenly charged twice, contributions exceeding the legal limit and checks that bounced. As a result, her total was reduced to $25.6 million — dead even with Mr. Obama, whose first-quarter take also shrank, albeit to a lesser degree.

And in one important measure, the amount collected from individuals, it now appears that Mr. Obama surpassed Mrs. Clinton. Mrs. Clinton’s overall total included $236,000 from political action committees, while Mr. Obama did not accept money from PACs.

Source

This entry was posted on Monday, August 13th, 2007 at 4:20 pm and is filed under "We are The President", Flip-tastic!, Really ?. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.