Get ready for record campaign spending

WASHINGTON — Freed from a serious fundraising constraint, Sen. Barack Obama is positioned to mount a general-election campaign on a scale the nation has never seen, fueled by hundreds of millions of dollars in private donations.

By rejecting public financing of his presidential bid Thursday, Obama faces no legal spending limits after he emerges from the Democratic convention in August and moves to the final stage of the race against the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain.

In a widely anticipated decision, Obama turned down $84.1 million in federal dollars in opting out of the federal system, the first major-party candidate to do so since it started in 1976. But his campaign is betting it will collect far more than that from his donors.

The Illinois senator intends to use the extra money to redraw the electoral map. He will run television ads in traditionally Republican states and deploy field operations in places Democrats are not supposed to win.

"It allows him to go broader and deeper than any prior candidate has been able to do from a financial basis," said Don Sipple, a Republican political strategist.

McCain said Thursday he would accept public financing, meaning he will be restricted to $84.1 million in direct spending in the two months between the Republican convention and Election Day.

He accused Obama of breaking a promise to abide by the federal spending limit. "This is a big deal, a big deal," McCain said. "He has completely reversed himself and gone back, not on his word to me, but the commitment he made to the American people."

While the choice risks undercutting Obama's well-cultivated public image as a champion of political reform, the fundraising strength he's shown in the party primaries makes it likely he now will be able to wage a campaign on an unprecedented scale.

"Raising a half-billion dollars is a very realistic figure for him," said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist and senior adviser to the past two Democratic presidential candidates.

The pace of fundraising could be staggering. To make the $500 million mark in the remaining 137 days before Nov. 4, the campaign would need to raise $3.6 million a day, including Sundays, all in increments of no more than $2,300 per person, the legal limit for contributions. That's more than $150,000 per hour, more than $2,500 a minute, much of it likely from the Internet.

Obama's ambitions were evident in a TV spot he rolled out Thursday. Called "Country I Love," the 60-second ad is airing in 18 states, many of which voted Republican in the 2004 presidential contest, including Colorado, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia.

Obama's campaign said the decision to reject public funding was a tough one. It is rooted in the unmatched success Obama has enjoyed in raising money. Through the end of April, Obama had brought in more than $265 million, compared with less than $97 million for McCain, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

Under the public-financing system, McCain can continue to raise and spend as much as he wants until he becomes the GOP nominee at the September convention. At that point, the Arizona senator can spend only the $84.1 million from a federal treasury fund. Taxpayers kick into the fund by voluntarily checking off a $3 contribution on their tax returns.

Obama's deep pool of 1.4 million donors is expected to swell. He is absorbing New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's fundraising machinery, which will provide a jolt.

Obama is also in a strong position because nearly half his donors have given less than $200, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Contributions to the general election are capped at $2,300. So Obama is free to return to his small donors and ask for more.

Chris Kofinis, a Democratic strategist who worked for John Edwards' 2008 presidential campaign, predicted Obama could raise and spend $200 million in the "post-convention" period alone.

Evan Tracey, head of the nonpartisan Campaign Media Analysis Group, said Obama's strategy against Clinton in the Pennsylvania primary foreshadowed what he might do to weaken McCain. Obama forces did not expect to beat her, but they spent so much that Clinton was compelled to deplete her resources to preserve victory.

"He can complicate McCain campaign's electoral math," Tracey said. "They can try to make any state in the country competitive."

It is unclear whether Obama will pay any price in terms of voter disillusionment.

Obama has said that his fundraising effort, which has relied heavily on small donors, is in keeping with "the spirit" of public financing. The system was established in 1976 in reaction to the Watergate scandal.

Anthony Corrado, a campaign-finance expert at Colby College in Maine, said there's some substance to Obama's claim. "He offers the prospect of a campaign based on small donors, which was one of the goals of the Watergate reform," Corrado said. "That diminishes some of the concern people might have."

But Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, a nonpartisan watchdog group, pointed out that "larger contributions and bundlers already have played an important role in financing the Obama presidential primary campaign and may well do so in the general election."

Information from the Chicago Tribune, McClatchy Newspapers

and The Philadelphia Inquirer

is included in this report.