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London Telegraph | April 2, 2007
Sally Peck
Hillary Clinton has raised $26 million (£13.2 million) in three months since launching her campaign for the Democratic nomination, in what looks set to be the most expensive election race in history.
The New York senator also transferred $10 million left over from her senate re-election campaign, giving her a fundraising total of $36 million for the first quarter - a record for a non-election year.The deadline to report quarterly campaign finance figures to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) is April 15, but some candidates have released their figures early to show their financial strength.
A spokesman for John Edwards, the former senator, said he had raised more than $14 million (£7 million) since the beginning of the year, about twice what he raised in the same quarter for his 2004 bid for the presidency.
Senator Barack Obama, widely seen as Mrs Clinton's most prominent rival for Democratic donors, and all of the Republican hopefuls are yet to publish their figures.
John Kerry, the Massachusetts senator, had $10.2 million in his campaign coffers by the end of the first quarter of 2003, the year before the 2004 elections.
A spokesman for Mrs Clinton's campaign said $6 million of her total had been raised from grassroots efforts, including $4.2 million on the internet and $1.8 million from telemarketing.
More than 50,000 people made donations, and 80 per cent of the contributions were $100 or less, her team said.
This is the first year that all the major candidates have rejected public financing for their campaigns - and the spending limit that comes with it - in favour of the right to solicit unlimited private funds.
President George W Bush still holds the fundraising record of $50 million in the third quarter of 2003, when he did not face a primary challenger, and he spent a record $345 million on his 2004 campaign for the White House.