McCain Raises Record $27 Million In July

McCain’s fund raising is getting stronger, which implies that the conservative base is resigning itself to supporting him as the lesser of two evils.

The McCain campaign, in its best fund-raising month ever, took in $27 million in July. This was the fifth month in a row that Mr. McCain’s donations exceed those of the previous month.
In a conference call with reporters, McCain campaign manager Rick Davis, said the campaign currently has $21.4 million in cash on hand, slightly less than the cash balance of $27.6 million that the campaign had at the end of June. In June, the campaign raised $22.2 million. A total of 600,000 donors have given to the campaign so far, Mr. Davis added.

The dropping cash-on-hand balance is a reflection of McCain needing to spend a lot of campaign cash before he accepts public financing. Basically, to make things kosher with campaign laws, the McCain camp has to restrain fund raising and increase spending.
Meanwhile, I’m still convinced that Obama (with a suspicious end-of-the-month fund raising windfall on the last day of June) dated a lot of his July fund raising as June fund raising in order to inflate his totals for that month. It will be interesting to see what Obama’s July numbers are, and it will also be interesting to see how long it takes the campaign to announce them.
If Obama sits on his July fund raising numbers for a while you can bet that the campaign is scrambling for the best way to inflate the numbers or spin them.