Obama Passes Clinton

Trying to cast the Democratic presidential nomination battle in a new light, a top aide to Senator Obama is tagging Senator Clinton as a "quasi-incumbent" and says the Illinois senator's victory in the second-quarter fund-raising race signals that he is the candidate most "synched up with the electorate."

Mr. Obama's campaign was beaming yesterday as it disclosed that it had raised $32.5 million in the last three months, outpacing Mrs. Clinton's expected total by $5.5 million and by nearly twice that amount in money that can be spent in the primary. In a separate memo, Mr. Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, added a new edge to the race by referring to Mrs. Clinton as a "quasi-incumbent" and saying the Obama campaign had expected her to raise $20 million to $25 million more than him by this stage.

The memo, which the campaign sent to supporters and provided to reporters, sought to downplay national polls that have consistently shown Mrs. Clinton with a comfortable lead even as Mr. Obama has overtaken her in fund raising.

"One of our opponents is also the quasi-incumbent in the race, who in our belief will and should lead just about every national poll from now until the Iowa caucuses," Mr. Plouffe wrote. "Expect nothing different and attach no significance to it."

In elevating Mrs. Clinton's status as a former first lady and political powerhouse to something akin to incumbency, the Obama campaign is trying to multiply the momentum it will already gather from its fund-raising success.

In particular, his campaign has pointed to its rapidly expanding base of donors as evidence that support is wider and deeper for Mr. Obama than for Mrs. Clinton. More than 258,000 people have contributed to Mr. Obama's campaign, aides said yesterday, including 154,000 new donors in the second quarter that ended Saturday. Mrs. Clinton's campaign yesterday would not say how many donors it has, but the number, when released, is expected to be far fewer.

"It is clear we have the most room to grow in this race," Mr. Plouffe wrote, adding that "we also remain the candidate most clearly synched up with the electorate."

A senior adviser to Mrs. Clinton, Howard Wolfson, last week said the campaign expected to raise $27 million in the second quarter. Aides to Mrs. Clinton have taken great pains in recent weeks to predict that Mr. Obama would out-raise her in an effort to diminish any surprise when the numbers came in. Mrs. Clinton herself scoffed at the suggestion that it would be significant if Mr. Obama took in more cash. "It would mean nothing to my campaign. Nothing at all," she declared to reporters last month.

An aide to Mrs. Clinton disclosed last night that about $21 million of her $27 million second quarter total was for the primary, where the maximum individual donation is $2,300. Mr. Obama's campaign said $31 million of its estimated $32.5 million second quarter total is for the primary, an even wider advantage that indicates Mrs. Clinton is relying much more on larger individual donors that may max out before the first ballots are cast.

Neither camp has disclosed how much cash it has on hand or given any indication of how fast it is spending its haul. Still, unless Mr. Obama squanders his war chest by spending recklessly, his fund-raising should be enough to pay for significant television airtime in the early primary states.

Although Mrs. Clinton's $26.1 million first-quarter fund-raising total was less than $1 million more than Mr. Obama's, she had an extra $10 million left over from her successful reelection bid last year.

A Democratic political consultant, Hank Sheinkopf, wasn't buying Mr. Plouffe's characterization of Mrs. Clinton as a "quasi-incumbent." Campaigns that are trailing in the polls, he said, will "say the most crazy things" to elevate themselves. "Today the polling is clear: He's behind, she's not," Mr. Sheinkopf said.

Both candidates substantially widened their money lead over a former North Carolina senator, John Edwards, and Governor Richardson of New Mexico. Aides to Mr. Edwards said he took in a little more than $9 million from April to June, just meeting their stated goal for the period but falling well short of the $14 million the campaign raised in the first quarter. That was barely more than Mr. Richardson, who raised $7 million and has been creeping up on his better-known rivals in some state polls.

As Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama have increasingly dominated the former vice presidential nominee in headlines and cash, Mr. Edwards has focused on the early voting states, particularly Iowa, where he leads in the polls. A victory there, his aides say, will vault Mr. Edwards to the front of the pack, leading to higher poll numbers and fund-raising totals heading into the larger primaries.

"We're not in it to win a fund-raising contest. We're not in it to win a national poll. We're in it to win the nomination, which means prevailing in Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina, and Nevada," Mr. Edwards's deputy campaign manager, Jonathan Prince, told reporters in a conference call yesterday, referring to the earliest primaries. "We are quite comfortable with where we are," he added.

The leading Republican campaigns were quiet yesterday and are expected to release their second quarter fund-raising numbers as early as today.