Sunday, October 16, 2011

Bringin' in the Big Bucks

Mit Romney's campaign revealed Friday that the presidential candidate brought in $14.16 million in the third quarter.  This brings the Massachusetts governors July-September total to near $32 million.  The campaign further revealed that the $14 million came from over 56,000 contributors.  At the end of the third quarter fellow the campaign of fellow candidates Rick Perry and Ron Paul revealed that Rick Perry has just over $15 million from the third quarter while Ron Paul has just over $8 million.  Herman Cain reported to CNN on Thursday that his campaign has hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash on hand and most importantly no debt.  On the Democrat side, President Obama's re-election campaign reported raising $42.8  million between July and September with the Democratic National Committee raised nearly $70 million in the third quarter.  While Obama is currently trumping the others in the amount of money racked in, he still has quite a battle to face for re-election.  With all of the money being racked in, is that the biggest factor for the 2012 elections?

For a large portion of the history of the United States, regulation of funds in federal election campaigns was very loose.  However, there were some reforms.  In 1867, The Naval Appropriations Bill was a legislation aimed at stopping the shaking down of naval yard workers for political donations.  In recent decades the Federal Election Campaigns Act came shortly after the Watergate scandal and placed further limitation and stricter regulation on campaign funding.  However, considering such reforms and regulations, the numbers show that candidates in recent elections who have won had a large amount of campaign money during their elections.



While there may be a large amount of money flying around, it will be interested to see if the pattern of the candidate with more money defeating their opponent continues to exist.

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