President Obama and his campaign team are apparently fibbing to donors. Virtually every day, the Obama team sends out desperate emails complaining that they’re running behind Mitt Romney in the money race. But according to OpenSecrets.org, that’s simply not the case. As of May 31, 2012, Obama had raised $255,162,109. He’d spent $109,718,115. That means he had almost $110 million in cash on hand.
Mitt Romney, by contrast, had raised $121,023,126; he’d spent $104,036,499. He had just under $17 million in cash on hand. So Obama had raised nearly twice as much cash as Romney as of May 31, 2012, and had about six times as much cash on hand.
Obama hasn’t reported his June figures; Romney reportedly raised in excess of $100 million. People have supposed that the reason Obama didn’t release his figures is that he didn’t want to look like he was coming up short against Romney. In fact, the opposite may be true – Obama may be raising scads of cash, but wants to continue pressing a message of urgency into the donor base.