The fundraising ideas of the Barack Obama Campaign in the 2012 election has earned them the title of "Greatest Fundraiser of All Time" and while there may not be an official award that goes with this unofficial title, it is something that will live in history for a long time to come.
Obama was able to raise $1.4 billion through his personal campaign committee for the two successful campaigns to take the big chair at the White House. The campaign's official name is Obama for America, and Thursday they filed a report showing the final two and a half weeks before the election ended. In the report, Obama was able to raise $88 million and spent a total of $176 million. By contrast, Mitt Romney was only able to raise $66 million and spend $107 million during that period.
Obviously, the American people were willing to not only get out and vote for President Obama, but also they were willing to make sure he had the money to win the election, and campaign spending was likely a large part of why Obama won the election, with $83 million being spent on television ads alone from October 18th to the end of the election.
Obama raised a grand total of $730 million for this particular presidential campaign, while Mitt Romney only raised $473 million during that same period. The 2008 campaign saw him break the record, raising $493 million, and this campaign was just $20 million short of that, and combined set a record that it will be difficult for any future presidential hopeful to match. So, if you need fundraising ideas, President Obama and his campaign people are the ones to ask.
Photo: James O'Malley on Flickr.com
Gabriel Legend covers current events for Gather News, and writes horror fiction. If you like an article from Gabriel please share it using the social media links below.Follow Gabriel Legend on Twitter (@GabeLegend).
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Comments: 5
Obama's team are clearly experts at fundraising, but I suspect they were helped by the lunacy on the right which led people who might otherwise not have donated to do so to avoid seeing the nut hatch escapees elected.
How much was spent by the various Republican candidates running for the 2012 party nomination spent has yet to be released. Neither has it been published as to what amount was spent by third party candidates.
Addionally, we must also take into consideration how much, again unknown, was spent by the thousands of local, county, state and federal candidates vying for those political jobs in the 2012 general election. An amount which had to be in the hundreds of millions, if not billions. Hell, one candidate, Linda McMahon, spent 50 million in 2008 and another 44 million in 2012 of her her own personal wealth, just to be a Senator, thankfully, having both times been unsuccessful in her candidancy. That's 94 million alone by one candidate, money throw away to the various corporate entities of America who profit from campaign financial expenditures.
I have always been boastfully proud of the American political system as being the beacon of democray for all other countries and nations to follow. However, I now have become personally ashamed and disillusioned, to know that our political system has gotten to the point where the winning of the presidency and other political jobs are so monetarialy wasteful. Especially, when we have approximately 15 million Americans out of work. Tens of millions of fellow Americans who are living in poverty, some living on the street and resorting to begging for handouts, others barely existing on government welfare and other federal assistance programs.
One party spent over 4 billion dollars trying to get a man reelected who in his first term, demonstrated his compassion for the American people. While the other major party spent more than twice that amount to get a man elected to the office who wanted to disenfranchise 47% of the American people. What was his reason, because those 47%ers of the American people were either indignant, jobless, poverty ridden, disabled and/or otherwise, unable to fully support themselves and their families. Thereby, they were relegated to being recipients of government welfare and other social programs. Programs which the candidate viewed as being designed by the Democrats for "Moochers and Takers" and therefore a drain on the American economy and one of the main reasons for the federal deficit.
But, don't get me wrong, I'm also embarrassed by my party having spent more than 4 billion dollars in order to get the president reelected for another four years. For me, the whole American political system has become summarialy ludicris, demonsterously wasteful and embarrassingly wrongheaded in it's present premise.
It would be my personal opinion that there should be a set limit/cap/maximum amount of money which can be spent by a candidate's campaign, with no loopholes such as fund raising by Super PAC's. etc. The government treasury could purchase additional time on PBS and CSPAN radio and television networks for debates by the candidates as well as air time for each candidate to express what their personal and political ideology and their goals for the country.
This unlimited/unconstrained/uncontrolled funding and spending has got to end now. There must be limits applied for the good of our country and to save our politicl election system. If it is not, we will become a nation who no longer elects it's government, but, a nation which allows the wealthiest candidate to buy his or her desired government office.
Further, the poorest and most distitue among our people should not be left as outcast to beg for food or starve to death and/or to be required to wait in welfare lines, while tens of billions of dollars are being wasted to get some self serving political candidate elected to a government office.