Obama super PAC raises nearly as much as Romney's in May, which is an improvement
Obama. Chuck Kennedy
3:17 pm Jun. 21, 2012
Priorities USA Action, the super PAC formed to support President Obama, reported its best fund-raising month yesterday, with just over $4 million raised in May.
That's nearly twice as much as the committee raised in March and April, when it posted monthly totals of just over $2 million, and nearly as much as Mitt Romney's super PAC, which raised about $5 million.
While campaigns love to tout their small donors, the premise of super PACs is to reel in the big donors who are constrained by the campaign contribution limits.
The group told Politico that it had already eclipsed this month's total in June.
(Super PAC numbers must be reported with the perpetual caveat that donors to an affiliated nonprofit, in this case Priorites USA, are not disclosed, making it nearly impossible to accurately assess the groups' fund-raising.)
While Obama was criticized in a New York Times story this morning for not being sufficiently solicitous to his big donors, Priorities seems more committed to systematic gestures of appreciation: Three sets of "thank you flowers" are listed among May's expenditures.
Priorities didn't get much help from New York.
Fifteen donors from New York state combined to give just $16,100 in the month. The only five-figure contribution was $10,000 from Betsy Blattmachr of Garden City. After that, there was one contribution of $1,500 and two for $1,000 each, and the rest were all $500 or less.
Priorities collected just $12,500 from New York in April, and $17,000 in March.
In April, Priorities began listing payments to the local fund-raiser Susan Torricelli (ex-wife of former New Jersey senator Robert Torricelli). Torricelli joins other fund-raising consultants in California, Colorado and Washington, D.C.
Last month, the group hosted a meeting in New York with Obama's senior campaign adviser David Axelrod.
Romney's super PAC, Restore Our Future, collected $350,000 from New York donors last month.
