McCain has raised a total of $72 million for his presidential bid, including $15 million in March. McCain exits campaign money race

John McCain is abandoning any hope of catching the Democrats in fundraising.

Based on new financial disclosure reports released Sunday, and interviews with his finance team, the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee will instead accept taxpayer money to finance his general election and share other costs with the Republican National Committee.


The strategy will allow McCain to stretch his campaign dollars by splitting the cost of television advertising and other campaign activity with the RNC.

But the decision also puts the Arizona senator at risk of being badly outspent – even with RNC help – by a Democratic nominee who will be allowed to spend as much as he or she can raise on the November race.

McCain has raised a total of $72 million for his presidential bid, including $15 million in March. He ended last month with about $11.5 million in cash.

In contrast, Democrat Barack Obama has raised more than $236 million for his campaign. He raised nearly $43 million in March and ended the month with $51 million in cash and no debts.

Obama’s chief rival, Hillary Clinton, has collected about $195 million for her candidacy. She raised about $21 million last month and reported having $32 million in cash, although about half of that money must be reserved for the general election and she is carrying about $10 million in debts.

The Illinois Democrat’s fundraising dominance has been on full display as he and Clinton fight hard toward Tuesday’s Pennsylvania primary. He has more offices in the Keystone State than Clinton and has been outspending her on television. In March alone, Obama reported spending $31 million compared to the New York senator’s $22.4 million.

McCain’s decision to bow out of the campaign money race upends the conventional thinking at the start of the 2008 season. At that time, most political players – including McCain – expected any serious candidate to forgo participating in the taxpayer financed system because of the spending limits imposed by it.

It also could also have a negative rippling effect inside the Republican Party.

In the past two cycles, the national headquarters increasingly has been forced to come to the rescue of House and Senate candidates who were badly outspent by the Democrats.

Today, the congressional Democrats’ financial advantages have grown substantially while their Republican counterparts’ situation is increasingly dire.

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee reported Sunday having $38 million in the bank compared to the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s $17 million. More striking, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had $44 million in cash as of March 31, the end of the first quarter, while the National Republican Congressional Committee had just $7 million.

With the RNC focused now almost exclusively on protecting the party’s nominee, House and Senate candidates who don’t happen to be competing in presidential battleground states may be on their own.

It’s clear McCain’s team did not come to its recent decision easily. After sewing up the nomination in February, the senator recruited top notch fundraising talent, including the stars from the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign.

The newcomers faced the daunting task of creating a massive fundraising operation from scratch. Still, cash had begun to flow and March was one of McCain’s best fundraising months.

But advisers increasingly worried the senator simply didn’t have enough time to build the war chest he would need to compete with either Obama or Clinton. Unlike the Democrats who have had success in raising money effortlessly on the Internet, McCain was facing a more traditional fundraising scheme that requires repeated candidate appearances to draw big donors.

On March 31, McCain officially ceded the fundraising title. According to the new reports, the McCain campaign on that day refunded more than $3.2 million in individual donations that were earmarked for the general election campaign.

The Arizona senator also transferred about $621,000 to a newly formed account that will cover the legal and accounting costs of complying with a taxpayer funded presidential financing program.

Under the program, McCain will be eligible to receive $84.1 million from the national treasury to run his campaign between his official nomination at the September Republican convention in Minnesota and Election Day.

Between now and then, McCain needs only to raise enough money to travel and keep his profile high enough not to be forgotten while the Democrats continue to battle one another. If a Democratic nominee emerges with enough time to launch an attack against McCain, a handful of well financed, Republican-friendly outside groups stand ready to quickly come to his aid.

McCain also can spend his summer headlining joint events to help raise money for the RNC, which can allocate millions to boosting his candidacy. The RNC on Sunday reported having $31 million in cash, compared to just $5 million in the Democratic National Committee’s account.

By directing donations to the RNC, money also can be raised in bigger chunks. The maximum donation to the RNC is $28,500; the biggest allowable donation to the McCain campaign for the general election would have been $2,300.

The joint campaign expenditures is a strategy that was expanded and perfected by President Bush in 2004.

The national parties already are permitted to spend about $19 million to support their nominee on “coordinated” campaign activities, which can range from advertising to voter turnout operations.

Four years ago, the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign and the RNC also introduced a new form of advertising that promoted both the party and the ticket -- and they evenly split the costs. The RNC spent $46 million on those ads in 2004, money that in previous cycles would have been deducted from the party nominee‘s campaign account.

Democrats objected to the hybrid ads. But the Federal Election Commission, which is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans, lacked the votes to determine that they broke campaign finance rules, thus paving the way for their use in this year’s cycle.