Barack Obama "scored a clean win" in the second quarter fundraising race against Hillary Clinton by taking in $32.5 million in the past three months, reports The Politico's Ben Smith and Richard Allen Greene. Obama outraised Clinton by $5 million and delegated $31 million of his total for the primaries. "Equally impressive, Obama has signed up more than 258,000 individual donors since he launched his campaign in February." In contrast, Clinton raised about $27 million and delegated $21 million for the primaries.
Obama has raised $55.7 million to date and Clinton $50 million, including $10 million from her Senate re-election account. John Edwards raised $9 million for the most recent quarter and Bill Richardson $7 million. Chris Dodd has raised $7.3 million this year and transferred $4.7 million from his Senate account. Figures for the other Democratic candidates haven't been released.
On the Republican side, the New York Times' David Kirkpatrick reports that Fred Thompson's sons became lobbyists after their father was elected to the Senate in 1994. Tony Thompson was invited to join a Nashville lobbying business by outgoing incumbent Senator Harlan Mathews (D), a "job that would let him capitalize on his father's new position." Mathews said Thompson relied on the contacts he made during his father's Senate campaign. Tony Thompson said he never lobbied the Senate or discussed clients with his father.
Advisors to Thompson said he'll probably make his presidential plans official in the next two weeks, reports the Washington Post's Michael Shear. Meanwhile the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier's Todd Dorman interviewed Iowa Republicans who say they are holding their breath to see how Thompson will perform and have soured on John McCain, mainly because of his support for the Senate immigration compromise.
Thompson got fire from an unexpected source this weekend: Hillary Clinton, who blasted him after he told an audience last week that the immigration bill would leave the U.S. more open to terrorism, reports the New York Daily News' Celeste Katz. "I don't imagine they're coming here to bring greetings from Castro. We're living in the era of the suitcase bomb," Thompson said. Clinton, speaking at a meeting of Hispanic activists and politicians in Florida, said, "I was appalled when one of the people running for or about to run for the Republican nomination talked about Cuban refugees as potential terrorists. Apparently he doesn't have a lot of experience in Florida or anywhere else, and doesn't know a lot of Cuban-Americans."
The conference for gave seven Democratic presidential candidates the opportunity to bash the GOP over immigration, reports the Tampa Tribune's William March. Obama said there was "an ugly overtone" in the debate and he accused opponents of using "the politics of fear." Joe Biden said the immigration debate "has become a race to the bottom - who can be the most anti-Hispanic." No Republicans attended the meeting because the organization is mostly Democratic.
Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani slammed the head of NYC's firefighters union for trying to derail his candidacy, reports the New York Post's Maggie Haberman. The union's head faulted Giuliani's tenure as mayor and his performance on 9/11. Giuliani's campaign responded by saying the mayor bolstered the FDNY by increasing equipment such as "bunker gear, thermal-seeking cameras and personal alarms to make it easier to find downed firefighters -- as well as budget increases to the FDNY at times when other city agencies saw their funding cut."
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