President Barack Obama's reelection campaign and his Democratic party raked in $43 million in April, about $10 million less than the previous month, his campaign manager said in a video posted online Wednesday.
"Thanks to everyone who stepped up to support the campaign. Together, we raised more than $43 million from 437,323 grassroots supporters in April alone," said Obama's campaign manager Jim Messina.
"We had 169,500 first-time donors in April -- putting us within reach of two million donors this election cycle," said Messina, who said the average donation at just over $50 reflected the campaign's grass roots appeal.
"That makes our campaign different, and it's how we're going to build a winning organization across the country," Messina said, remarking that 98 percent of the donations were in amounts of $250 or less.
Obama is running for reelection in November, when voters across the United States also cast ballots for the entire House of Representatives and a third of the US Senate.
The ability to raise millions is a necessary part of the expensive American campaign system and the candidate with bigger campaign coffers has a decided advantage in getting his message out to voters.
Democrats' April haul was less than in March, when they raked in about $53 million dollars.
Messina suggested that the president's fundraisers have their work cut out for them to match the deep pockets of rich donors supporting presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney.
And Messina said the campaign is counting on the generosity of contributors to counter the effect of "Super Pac" groups which, under recently reformulated campaign finance rules, can spend as much money as they like buying ads to attack Obama.
"Oil company executives and other special interests are dumping millions of dollars in Super Pac attack ads," Messina said in his Internet video to Obama's supporters.
"We got almost $60 million in spending against the president and his policies so far in this campaign by the other side," Messina said, citing two particular Super Pacs who between them spent $10 million on ads critical of the president.
Source: AFP American Edition
