Record Spending by Obama’s Camp Shrinks Coffers

Since the beginning of last year, Mr. Obama and the Democrats have burned through millions of dollars to find and register voters. They have spent almost $50 million subsidizing Democratic state parties to hire workers, pay for cellphones and update voter lists. They have spent tens of millions of dollars on polling, online advertising and software development to turn Mr. Obama’s fallow volunteers corps into a grass-roots army.

The price tag: about $400 million from the beginning of last year to June 30 this year, according to a New York Times analysis of Federal Election Commission records, including $86 million on advertising.

But now Mr. Obama’s big-dollar bet is being tested. With less than a month to go before the national party conventions begin, the president’s once commanding cash advantage has evaporated, leaving Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee with about $25 million more cash on hand than the Democrats as of the beginning of July.

Despite Mr. Obama’s multimillion-dollar advertising barrage against Mr. Romney, he is now being outspent on the airwaves with Mr. Romney benefiting from a deluge of spending by conservative “super PACs” and outside groups. While Mr. Romney has depleted much of his funds from the nominating contest, he is four weeks away from being able to tap into tens of millions of dollars in general election money. And many polls show the race to be very close.

Mr. Obama’s cash needs — he spent $70.8 million in June alone, more than half on advertising and far more than he raised — have brought new urgency to his campaign’s fund-raising efforts. His advisers have had to schedule more fund-raising trips than originally planned to big-money states like New York, according to donors involved in the effort. The super PAC supporting his campaign, Priorities USA Action, is enlisting former President Bill Clinton as a rainmaker, hoping to counter its conservative counterparts.

While Mr. Obama will also have access to general election money in September, he is unlikely to have the same spending advantage over Mr. Romney as he had during the primary season, when Mr. Romney spent much of his money battling Republican rivals.

And with August a traditionally slow month for fund-raising, Mr. Obama has bombarded his supporters in recent weeks with increasingly urgent pleas for money, mindful that he will need to drastically raise his cash intake in the coming months merely to equal his record-breaking haul from 2008.

“My upcoming birthday next week could be the last one I celebrate as president of the United States, but that’s not up to me — it’s up to you,” Mr. Obama wrote last week as the campaign’s latest fund-raising deadline and his Aug. 4 birthday approached. “This July deadline is our most urgent yet, coming after two consecutive months of being significantly outraised by Romney and the Republicans.”

Mr. Obama’s heavy expenditures — and his campaign’s pressure on bundlers to find and groom new donors — have stirred worries among other Democrats, who have long taken Mr. Obama’s financial supremacy for granted.

“There is a lot of worry that Romney’s folks are raising so much more,” said one of Mr. Obama’s top fund-raisers, who did not want to be identified as discussing internal campaign business. “I just don’t think there’s a lot of high-dollar money left on the table.”

In fact, Republicans insist that Mr. Obama will rue his spending.

“Heading into the final laps of the campaign, the Democrats will regret squandering so much of their haul early in the cycle on massive monthly overhead,” said Sean M. Spicer, a spokesman for the R.N.C.

But in interviews, party and campaign officials defended the approach of spending money to build out the campaign, saying they believed that the wisdom of Mr. Obama’s strategy would be demonstrated at the voting booth in November.

“The earlier the better,” said Adam Fetcher, an Obama campaign spokesman. “Starting a conversation with a persuadable voter months before Election Day allows us to be more effective in responding to that voter’s priorities than if they first hear from us a few weeks out. Building and maintaining our grass-roots foundation takes time and resources, but we believe those early investments will make a difference.”

But grass-roots movements do not come cheap.

Kitty Bennett and Derek Willis contributed reporting.

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Cuomo Says His Record Will Help Elect New York Democrats

Addressing a meeting of the State Democratic Committee, the governor said his time in office amounted to “a beautiful story to tell.”

“The greatest accomplishment of all, my friends, is not about the individual issues,” Mr. Cuomo said. “At the end of the day, after 18 months, people believe in state government once again.”

But he conspicuously did not mention if his support for Democrats extended to those running for the State Senate, which is currently controlled by a Republican majority that has generally been supportive of his agenda. Speaking to reporters after the speech, Mr. Cuomo refused to discuss control of the Senate — or any other political subject.

“We’ll discuss political decisions in the political season, but we’re now in the government season and we’re trying to get government bills passed,” he said. “So let’s keep the conversation about government.”

Asked why he had come to a party event if he did not want to discuss politics, Mr. Cuomo responded, “We had a political speech; I’m now stopping the political speech and we’re going to talk about government.”

During his 19-minute address to party officials, in a hotel ballroom down the street from the Capitol, Mr. Cuomo spent much of his time describing his legislative achievements, including the creation of a property tax cap and an overhaul of the state’s personal income tax code. He talked only briefly about politics, a subject that he avoids discussing in news conferences and other public events.

In his speech, Mr. Cuomo described re-electing President Obama as the party’s “first order of business.”

Promising that New York would “give him the best mandate in the United States of America,” Mr. Cuomo said the economy had improved during the Obama administration, and he noted the difficult economic circumstances the president faced when he took office.

“They were talking about the banks on Wall Street toppling like dominoes, one after the other,” he said, “and the firm hand of President Barack Obama came in and took this nation and this nation’s economy and it stabilized.”

Mr. Cuomo also offered a discussion of political philosophy, describing what he saw as the key differences between Democrats and Republicans in New York.

“The difference between us, as progressives, and the conservatives,” he said, “is that we believe that government can work and that we can come together and make this place a better place for all of us.”

“What the conservatives are saying is that doesn’t work — government doesn’t work,” he added. “What the conservatives are saying is, government is a fool’s errand, it’s too expensive, it’s counterproductive, it’s corrupt — you can’t make it work. And that leads the conservatives to their philosophy of this extreme individualism: do for yourself because there is no collective, and there is no ability to come together for the common good.”

The meeting included appearances by the two officials whom Mr. Cuomo chose this week to serve as leaders of the state party, Mayor Stephanie A. Miner of Syracuse and Assemblyman Keith L. T. Wright of Manhattan. Ms. Miner and Mr. Wright will be formally installed at a meeting early next month.

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To DNC's Wasserman Shultz, Republicans' record is 'antiwoman' (The Christian Science Monitor)

Democratic Party chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz took charge of the Democratic National Committee in May. In 1992, at age 26, she became the youngest woman ever elected to the Florida House. In 2004, she became the first Jewish congress-woman elected from her state. She was the guest speaker at the May 26 Monitor breakfast in Washington, D.C.

Whether President Obama permanently damaged his standing with Israel's supporters by suggesting peace negotiations be based on Israel's 1967 borders with adjustments:

"To suggest that the president did significant damage to his support in the Jewish community is a gross overstatement."

RELATED: President Obama in Afghanistan

Partisan elements in Middle East policy:

"We need to make sure that Israel never becomes a partisan issue.... Unfortunately, I think there are organizations that claim to be pro-Israel that are partisan first and pro-Israel second.... The way the Republican Jewish Coalition has conducted itself is they put their Republicanism in front of their pro-Israel stance."

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Whether the US withdrawal from Afghanistan will be fast and deep enough to satisfy the left wing of the Democratic Party:

"I am not concerned at all.... If you asked constituents like mine if they would like to see us get out of Afghanistan, they would say yes.... So far, I have seen the voters being willing to give his [Mr. Obama's] plan an opportunity to work.... I don't see any indication that [the president] would draw a primary challenge over it."

The Republican Party's approach to women:

"Their third most important priority, by indication of it being HR3, was getting rid of ... Planned Parenthood funding [and] redefining rape so that you could not get access to an abortion paid with federal funds unless you were forcibly raped, so statutory rape did not count, date rape didn't count.... So if you look on balance at their entire record, their record is antiwoman. Their record is a war on women, and it is a priority for them."

Democratic support for the auto industry:

"You've got the Big Three automakers who are profitable for the first time since 2004 ... and the loans being paid back by Chrysler, by GM.... If it were up to the candidates running for president on the Republican side, we would be driving foreign cars. They would have let the automobile industry in America go down the tubes."

Made in America:

"We need to focus on making it in America again. And there are multiple meanings to that. [Possible GOP presidential candidates] Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Jon Huntsman ... I am concerned about their commitment to American exceptionalism."

RECOMMENDED: Election 101: Tim Pawlenty as 'everyman's' candidate? Ten points about who he is.

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To DNC's Wasserman Shultz, Republicans' record is 'antiwoman' (The Christian Science Monitor)

Democratic Party chairman Debbie Wasserman Schultz took charge of the Democratic National Committee in May. In 1992, at age 26, she became the youngest woman ever elected to the Florida House. In 2004, she became the first Jewish congress-woman elected from her state. She was the guest speaker at the May 26 Monitor breakfast in Washington, D.C.

Whether President Obama permanently damaged his standing with Israel's supporters by suggesting peace negotiations be based on Israel's 1967 borders with adjustments:

"To suggest that the president did significant damage to his support in the Jewish community is a gross overstatement."

RELATED: President Obama in Afghanistan

Partisan elements in Middle East policy:

"We need to make sure that Israel never becomes a partisan issue.... Unfortunately, I think there are organizations that claim to be pro-Israel that are partisan first and pro-Israel second.... The way the Republican Jewish Coalition has conducted itself is they put their Republicanism in front of their pro-Israel stance."

youtube

Whether the US withdrawal from Afghanistan will be fast and deep enough to satisfy the left wing of the Democratic Party:

"I am not concerned at all.... If you asked constituents like mine if they would like to see us get out of Afghanistan, they would say yes.... So far, I have seen the voters being willing to give his [Mr. Obama's] plan an opportunity to work.... I don't see any indication that [the president] would draw a primary challenge over it."

The Republican Party's approach to women:

"Their third most important priority, by indication of it being HR3, was getting rid of ... Planned Parenthood funding [and] redefining rape so that you could not get access to an abortion paid with federal funds unless you were forcibly raped, so statutory rape did not count, date rape didn't count.... So if you look on balance at their entire record, their record is antiwoman. Their record is a war on women, and it is a priority for them."

Democratic support for the auto industry:

"You've got the Big Three automakers who are profitable for the first time since 2004 ... and the loans being paid back by Chrysler, by GM.... If it were up to the candidates running for president on the Republican side, we would be driving foreign cars. They would have let the automobile industry in America go down the tubes."

Made in America:

"We need to focus on making it in America again. And there are multiple meanings to that. [Possible GOP presidential candidates] Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, Jon Huntsman ... I am concerned about their commitment to American exceptionalism."

RECOMMENDED: Election 101: Tim Pawlenty as 'everyman's' candidate? Ten points about who he is.

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