Romney campaign is on three-month fundraising winning streak

WASHINGTON – President Obama and his aides have been warning supporters for weeks that they're in danger of losing the money battle.

By Charles Dharapak, AP

Mitt Romney leaves a hardware store in Wolfeboro, N.H., during a day off from the campaign trail on Monday.

By Charles Dharapak, AP

Mitt Romney leaves a hardware store in Wolfeboro, N.H., during a day off from the campaign trail on Monday.

They weren't just crying wolf.

Mitt Romney and the Republican Party said Monday that they picked up $101.3 million in July, the third straight month they have outraised the incumbent's campaign.

Obama and the Democrats raised just over $75 million in July, his campaign announced.

Romney's July advantage was the biggest yet, leading to increasingly urgent fundraising appeals from Obama and the Democrats.

One e-mail to supporters from Obama's campaign chief operating officer, Ann Marie Habershaw, used the subject line, "This is why I keep asking."

"We've been outraised by Mitt Romney and the Republicans for two months running," she said in the Aug. 2 e-mail, one of hundreds collected by ProPublica.org. "Right now, Romney and his allies are clobbering us on the airwaves in nearly every single battleground state — we've got to make sure our message can get through, too."

Romney's national finance chairman, Spencer Zwick, said Romney's financial support shows "this is more than a campaign — it is a cause."

Comparing monthly campaign fundraising:

Source: Romney and Obama campaigns

The release of monthly fundraising figures — which include money raised by the campaigns and the national party committees — has become a ritual for the presidential contenders. Romney's campaign announced his totals in an early-morning e-mail to reporters; the Obama camp followed up via Twitter hours later.

Obama boasted that 98% had given $250 or less (Romney's figure was 94%) and that 26% of his July donors had never contributed before.

Romney and his allies have $185.9 million cash on hand, but Obama did not disclose how much he has left to spend — an important number as the campaign enters the final three months. That number will come when the campaigns make their required federal disclosures on Aug. 20.

"There's not going to be inadequate resources for either candidate," said Sheila Krumholz of the Center for Responsive Politics, a money-in-politics research group. Even so, she said, it's nice to have the freedom that money brings: when and where to run ads, when and where to travel and which field offices to staff with more people.

If Romney does wind up with a money advantage, Krumholz said, "there will be a lot of nervous people on the Obama side."

Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the campaign's not panicking. She said fundraising is on track to produce "the biggest grass-roots campaign in history," one capable of "reaching voters in the key target states."

"We are where we need to be," she said.

On Monday night, Obama was scheduled to headline his 196th and 197th fundraisers since launching his re-election bid in spring 2011. That puts him on pace to triple the 86 fundraisers George W. Bush held in his 2004 campaign.

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