October 23, 2007	Tuesday	Shawwal 10, 1428

WASHINGTON: Doughnut eateries, stationery chains and purveyors of private jets are cashing in as White House campaigns open their warchests leading into the make-or-break weeks of primary voting.

Financial data released by the candidates shows they have raised collectively a staggering $420 million this year, led by Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, who has taken in just under 91 million.

Voluminous reports filed with the Federal Election Commission for the third quarter of 2007 also provide a snapshot of how, for the poorer second tier of candidates, it is a tale of two campaigns.

Clinton and her chief Republican rival Rudolph Guiliani spent a fortune on five-star hotels, spa retreats and chartered jets as they pursued their presidential quests in style.

But Texas Representative Ron Paul from the libertarian wing of the Republican Party (campaign issues: scrap income tax, the Federal Reserve and gun control) saves his pennies at motel chains.

“You know, we don’t travel around with a retinue of media in a private jet,” said Mike Gravel, a rank outsider for the Democratic nomination who has raised just $239,000 overall.

“And, of course, I pay a price for that, because they don’t cover me on a continuous basis like they do the other candidates, but that’s the nature of the beast,” the former Alaska senator told PBS television.

Through the services of a company called Flight Options, Republican John McCain had planned to head to electioneering stops by private jet.

But as he burned through cash, the Arizona senator took more commercial flights and recouped more than $420,000 from canceling charters with Flight Options.

Humble aides for all the candidates were to be found in the cheap eats that dot the United States, such as the IHOP pancake chain, McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts.

Nothing was too small to be itemised: someone in Team Clinton spent $24.07 at a Krispy Kreme branch in South Carolina on Sept 29. Paul listed all his gasoline receipts from refueling stops on lonely highways.

Fedex did a roaring trade from printing and delivering campaign materials, Staples was the favoured supplier of the stationery, and American Express was raking it in from charges on the candidates’ hefty credit card bills.

With this campaign on course to top the billion dollar mark by the time the next president is elected next November, some of the contenders are spending freely to raise their exposure before the first primaries.

Among the Republicans, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney spent over $21 million from July to September — over double the amount he raised.

But then Romney is a multi-millionaire who can afford to dip into the red.

Much of the cash from the man bidding to be America’s first Mormon president went on a television advertising blitz in New Hampshire and Iowa, which will hold their first nominating contests in less than three months.

“Because the calendar is not yet fixed the strategies are in constant flux,” said Costas Panagopoulos, a politics professor at Fordham University who specialises in elections research.

“At the end of the day all candidates will spend heavily on TV but other media are on their plates as well,” he said, noting that radio and the Internet are playing a bigger role than ever in grassroots campaigning.

Clinton’s main Democratic rivals, Barack Obama and John Edwards, are banking on early advances in this packed election cycle as a springboard to the party’s nomination.

Both contenders have lavished millions on building up campaign operations across the flatlands of Iowa, and are more active on the airwaves than the former First Lady, who does not lack for name recognition.

Obama is not too far behind Clinton in the cash stakes, and the Democrats’ fundraising take as a whole has dwarfed the Republican effort.

But Giuliani — who spent about $13 million in the third quarter — is campaigning harder in more populous states such as Florida, New Jersey and Illinois that will vote later.

For some Giuliani backers, the style in which the former New York mayor travels is no problem.

“I don’t give a damn whether he’s staying at Motel 6 or Ritz Carlton,” one unidentified donor to Giuliani told the Washington Post. “What I care about is where he is in the polls.”—AFP