In the money

Kerry Campaign: Fund Raising Tops $80M

Democrat John Kerry far behind President Bush (news - web sites) in fund raising, has collected more than $80 million this year, reaching his goal three months ahead of schedule, his campaign announced Thursday.

Despite his recent success, however, Kerry still has a long way to match Bush's fund raising this year.

The Republican incumbent has raised more than $185 million since launching his re-election effort last May, and has spent about one-third of it, according to campaign finance reports filed with the Federal Election Commission (news - web sites).

Well, at least the situation is better now than it was at the end of the primaries when Kerry was in debt several million and Bush had not desperately spent half his war chest on campaign ads to try to contain the damage done by the 9-11 commission and the disorder in Iraq.

On a related (but not relevant) note, Gore is giving the Democrats $6 million, which is nice of him, I guess.