WASHINGTON: Republican White Househopeful Mitt Romney raised more than $100 million last month, Washington-based publication Politico said Thursday, putting fundraising pressure squarely on PresidentBarack Obama.
The figure is a record for the 2012 campaign. While it is below the $150 million pulled in by Democrat Obama in September 2008, the most by any US politician in a month, Romney's haul is startling given that the funds were raised a full five months out from the November election.
Politico's Mike Allen broke the news on Twitter, after Romney's campaign leaked the June numbers.
The Obama team has yet to announce its fundraising totals for June, but the month may well be the second in a row in which Romney outraised the incumbent.
Romney raised more than $76 million in May, compared with more than $60 million for Obama. May was the first full month in which Romney was seen as the clear winner of the Republican primary race, and it marked the first time in which he outraised Obama.
The president, campaigning on Thursday in the swing state of Ohio, warned of a monumental financial push by Republicans to oust him from the White House.
"They're spending -- the other side's spending more money than any time in history," Obama told supporters.
His campaign suggested the leak of the June figures was aimed at blurring voters' attention from key focal points of the campaign that have emerged in the last week.
"Mitt Romney is trying to distract from a week when he took contradictory positions on the freeloader penalty in the Affordable Care Act and we learned more about his offshored finances in Switzerland, Bermuda, and the Cayman Islands," Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said, referring to reports that Romney keeps an undisclosed portion of his wealth outside the United States.
Obama lags behind Romney when it comes to super-PACs, the independent political action committees which can raise and spend unlimited funds to support candidates, although they cannot directly fund a campaign.
Wealthy conservatives are said to be funneling huge sums into outside groups that support Romney's agenda.
Despite what may amount to a Republican fundraising advantage in the presidential race, Obama senior campaign adviser David Axelrod brushed aside Romney's haul.
"I mean, I don't think that, ultimately, that this race will be determined on monthly fundraising," news website Buzzfeed quoted Axelrod as saying in Ohio.
He said big money won't help generate a victory "if you don't have the right candidate and the right message."
Fundraising is vital to US presidential elections, when candidates criss-cross the country for months and roll out several advertising campaigns, spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the process.
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