OBAMA, CLINTON TURN VICTORIES INTO DOLLARS

Senators Obama and Clinton have turned their respective victories in Iowa and New Hampshire into fund-raising windfalls, campaign officials said yesterday. By 4:30 p.m. yesterday, Mrs. Clinton had raised more than $1.1 million in the 18 hours since her surprise victory in the Granite State was announced, her campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, said in a conference call with donors and reporters. She has now raised more than $3 million for the month, after taking in more than $100 million during 2007. New Hampshire silenced concerns that financial support for Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy would dry up. “This gives lot of wind to her back instead of wind to her face,” a top New York fund-raiser for Mrs. Clinton, Hassan Nemazee, told The New York Sun. “It’s a huge, huge victory, and it enables you to go out with a lot more enthusiasm to people who may have been a little reluctant.” Mr. McAuliffe guaranteed to donors that the campaign would out-raise Mr. Obama in January. But despite its success in the last day, the Clinton camp has a long way to go — the Illinois senator hauled in more than $8 million in the first eight days of the month alone, his campaign manager reported yesterday, largely on the strength of his convincing victory in the Iowa caucus on January 3. Both campaigns are gearing up for an expensive nationwide fight. Each candidate sent out cash appeals by e-mail to supporters, and Mr. McAuliffe urged the more than 500 donors on yesterday’s call to each raise $10,000 by the end of January.

IN FLORIDA, GIULIANI PROPOSES ‘LARGEST TAX CUT IN HISTORY’

Pinning his presidential hopes on Florida, Mayor Giuliani is proposing what his campaign says is the “largest tax cut in the history of America.”

The proposal would cut the capital gains rate to 10% from 15%, slash the corporate tax rate to 25% from 35%, and index the alternative minimum tax to inflation. The plan also includes ideas endorsed by virtually all of the Republican contenders: making President Bush’s tax cuts from 2001 and 2003 permanent, and eliminating the estate tax, which Republicans uniformly refer to as the “death tax.”

Lastly, Mr. Giuliani wants to create an alternate, single-page tax form that would simplify the filing process and potentially save even more money for taxpayers. While his Republican rivals took to Michigan and South Carolina yesterday, Mr. Giuliani flew to Melbourne, Fla., to unveil the plan.

ENDORSEMENT WATCH

Two unions that may hold sway in the Nevada Democratic caucuses set for January 19 have decided to buck the results in New Hampshire and back Mr. Obama. “We understand the Democratic power establishment is for Senator Clinton. That’s their choice,” the secretary-treasurer of the 60,000-person Culinary Workers Union local in Nevada, Donald “D.” Taylor Jr. said at a news conference. “We think workers in America — we think that workers here in Las Vegas need to have a voice that’s going to bring people together like never before and also who’s one of us. I can’t emphasize that enough. Being an organizer on the street says a lot about somebody,” he said, referring to Mr. Obama’s stint as a community activist in Chicago. “Usually, Harvard law graduates don’t become organizers.”

Mr. Taylor also suggested that Nevada’s more diverse electorate would change the playing field in the presidential contest. “I have a lot of respect for all those folks in Iowa and New Hampshire, but we’re not just Wonder Bread here. We got pumpernickel. We got whole wheat. And we got rye,” the union leader said. The 17,500-member Nevada local of the Service Employees International Union also fell in yesterday behind Mr. Obama.