Makeshift Office at Heart of Obama Fund-Raising

[DeepModem Mom]

NYT: Makeshift Office at Heart of Obama Fund-Raising
By MICHAEL LUO
Published: February 19, 2008

CHICAGO — A cluster of cramped cubicles, tucked away in a rear corner of Senator Barack Obama’s campaign headquarters here, comprises the heart of a fund-raising machine that has reshaped the calculus of the 2008 election. Mr. Obama’s finance director, Julianna Smoot, who has helped him raise more than $150 million so far, does not even have her own office. A ping-pong table is the gathering spot for Friday lunches for her team.

The setting, which has the feel of an Internet start-up, is emblematic of how Mr. Obama has been able to raise heaps of cash. On Wednesday, the Obama campaign will report to the Federal Election Commission that it collected $36 million in January — $4 million more than campaign officials had previously estimated — an unprecedented feat for a single month in American politics that was powered overwhelmingly by small online donations. That dwarfed the $13.5 million in January that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is expected to report Wednesday and the $12 million Senator John McCain’s campaign said he brought in for the month.

Mr. Obama’s startling success, however, has also now put him on the spot, tempting him to back away from indications he gave last year that he would agree to use public financing in the general election if the Republican nominee did the same. The hesitation has given Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee whose advisers concede he would likely fall far short of Mr. Obama’s fund-raising for the general election, fodder for a series of attacks. “This type of back-peddling and waffling isn’t what inspired millions of people to invest in Senator Obama’s candidacy,” said Jill Hazelbaker, a spokeswoman for Mr. McCain.

Under rules of public financing, a candidate has access to $85 million from a taxpayer-financed fund for the general election, a substantial amount to spend for the roughly two months after this year’s conventions. But this election cycle has shattered fund-raising and spending records and upended expectations.

The details of Mr. Obama’s January fund-raising illustrate just how much his campaign has been able to chart a new path for the presidential race. He brought in $28 million online, with 90 percent of those transactions coming from people who donated $100 or less and 40 percent from donors who gave $25 or less, suggesting that these contributors could be tapped for more (donors are limited to giving $2,300 per candidate during the primary season.) More than 200,000 of the campaign’s nearly 300,000 donors in January were first-time givers to Mr. Obama.The campaign’s success over the Internet has freed Mr. Obama from having to take valuable time off the trail for fund-raising events for major donors — just $4 million in January came from traditional fund-raisers....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/19/us/politics/19cnd-obama.html

[wellstone dem]

1. And while they are raising $, they are not wastefully spending

it on things like conference rooms or tables (they are using a F'ing ping pong table???) Good for them.