Money shocker!

Hillary Clinton's campaign debt soars to $31 million !

L.A. Times

No wonder Sen. Hillary Clinton was so late filing her required campaign financial reports Tuesday night. Her political team didn't want the shocking news in it to overshadow her lopsided thumping of Sen. Barack Obama in Kentucky.
But here's the morning after, pay-up time. Clinton's campaign debt has now soared to nearly $31 million, according to numbers crunched early this morning by The Times' campaign finance guru, Dan Morain.
She added another $9.5 million in unpaid bills to vendors this past month alone, pushing her total debt to vendors and herself to the new astronomical figure, about a 50% debt increase in one month.
According to a campaign release put out Tuesday evening as election returns revealed her big win in Kentucky and loss in Oregon, Clinton raised "approximately $22 million" from other people in April. The release also touted that $10 million had poured in within 48 hours of another lopsided Clinton victory over Obama, that one in Pennsylvania, and said it was the second best fundraising month of her entire campaign.
But the number collected is actually closer to $21 million and the release also neglected to mention that she spent $28.9 million, nearly $8 million more than she took in. She used personal loans to make up part of the difference. She also delayed payments to consultants. Including the $9.5 million in unpaid bills from April, she owes consultants and other vendors $19.5 million.
Not to mention the total $11.4 million she has loaned herself.
For other campaign finance figures, including surprising financial success by the Republican Party aided by the president, continue reading below the video.

The likely Democratic nominee Obama continues to vastly out-raise Sen. John McCain, but the presumed Republican nominee is closing the money gap with the significant help of his party, according to new campaign finance reports filed Tuesday.
McCain disclosed he had $21.7 million in the bank at the end of April, compared to....
...Obama’s $46.5 million. But the Republican National Committee is proving to be a real financial equalizer for the Arizona senator with the notorious disaste for fundraising.
With significant time and help from President George W. Bush, the RNC ended April with $40.6 million in the bank—10 times more than the Democratic National Committee, which had a modest $4.4 million in the bank.
The Democratic Party's fund-raising also was a fraction of the Republicans' in April--a mere $4.7 million, compared to $19.8 million for the RNC.
The DNC’s cash in the bank actually fell from its March total, which was $5.3 million. Democrats have tapped former Vice President Al Gore in an effort to draw donors to party fund-raisers.
Party money can be used to help the nominees in a variety of direct and indirect ways during the general election campaign. Parties can pay for voter registration, voter turn-out efforts and advertising.
McCain’s primary fight has long been over, which allowed him to limit spending to $6.4 million last month. Democratic front-runner Obama raised $31.9 million last month and spent $36.4 million, according to his report filed late Tuesday.
McCain disclosed he received $17.8 million in contributions in April, pushing his total receipts to $100.4 million for the whole campaign, less than half Obama's total of $266.6 million since January 2007.
The freshman Illinois Democrat scooped up $31.9 million last month, a 20% drop from the $40 million he raised in March. He collected $55 million back in February, which seems millions of dollars ago, doesn't it?.
--Andrew Malcolm

Visit: Blacks4Barack OFFICIAL SITE !

Obama Aide May Take Over

For Howard Dean

At DNC !

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama is quietly planning to take over the Democratic National Committee and assemble a multistate team for the general election, the latest sign that he is putting rival Hillary Rodham Clinton and the nomination fight behind him.
Top Obama organizer Paul Tewes is in discussions to run the party, several Democratic officials said Tuesday.
Obama spokesman Bill Burton said no final decisions have been made on general election plans and that such decisions would be premature with Obama yet to clinch the nomination.
Tewes is one of the leading architects of Obama's success in the marathon Democratic primary race. He engineered Obama's critical victory in the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, which gave Obama the upper hand and Clinton was never able to fully overcome.
DNC executive director Tom McMahon and DNC political director Dave Boundy traveled to Chicago last week to meet with Tewes and other campaign officials to discuss merging efforts. The party officials have held similar meetings with Clinton campaign officials and last week got an agreement with both campaigns to start raising money that will benefit the eventual nominee.
The Obama campaign also is in discussions with staffers who will be dispatched to various swing states, but holding off on making announcements until Obama has won the nomination. Officials who spoke to The Associated Press about the discussions insisted on anonymity because the campaign wanted to keep the deliberations quiet.
Obama needs 2,026 delegates to clinch the nomination, and he moved within 100 of that goal after contests in Kentucky and Oregon Tuesday. Clinton was more than 250 delegates back.
The staffing decisions are a natural progression for Obama, who still is engaged in a primary campaign while Republican candidate John McCain has been free to prepare his general election team for months. Obama will have to hit the ground running to make up for lost time when, as expected, he dispatches Clinton.
Democratic and Republican nominees traditionally install loyalists at their party committees even though it is technically headed by its chairman _ in this case Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor and a presidential candidate four years ago.
McCain has put his own team at the Republican National Committee to operate a Victory Fund Committee that is corralling top GOP donors and plotting strategy for the general election. McCain took the steps shortly after locking up the nomination after primary wins on March 4.
But Obama can't afford to move too quickly toward the general election, or he will risk alienating Clinton supporters who are already emotional about the likelihood of their chosen candidate's closely fought defeat.
There have been other steps toward the Democratic nomination. Obama has been campaigning in general election battleground states. Fundraisers for the two campaigns have held quiet discussions on working together in the fall campaign. And Obama's campaign reached out to former Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle about joining forces for the general election, although several other top Clinton staffers said they have not been contacted.

Visit: Blacks4Barack OFFICIAL SITE !

Obama Calls Truce With Hillary Camp

Takes High Road

RENO, Nevada (CNN) — Barack Obama is calling for a truce of sorts with rival Hillary Clinton following days of a heated back-and-forth between both the Democrats' presidential campaigns over Clinton's record on civil rights.
“I may disagree with Sen. Clinton or Sen. Edwards on how to get things done or how to get there, but we share the same goals, we're all Democrats, we all believe in civil rights, we all believe in equal rights," Obama said told reporters in Reno, Nevada.
The comments follow several days of heated rhetoric from both campaigns following Clinton's remarks to a reporter last week on the legacies of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. "Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It took a president to get it done," she said, in her continued argument that her experience shows she can get more done as president than Obama.
Some African-American leaders criticized the remarks as denigrating the civil rights movement and Dr. King. The criticisms were amplified by Obama's campaign and Clinton later said she was "personally offended" the campaign was "distorting her words."
Meanwhile, speaking at a Clinton campaign event Sunday, BET founder Bob Johnson lashed out atObama's campaign over the criticism, and seemed to take a swipe at the Illinois senator's admitted drug use as a young man.
"As an African-American, I'm frankly insulted that the Obama campaign would imply that we are so stupid that we would think Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have been deeply and emotionally involved in black issues when Barack Obama was doing something in the neighborhood that I won't say what he was doing, but he said it in his book," he said..
Johnson later claimed he was not referencing Obama's past drug use specifically, but was referring rather to his time as a community organizer.
Speaking Monday, Obama said he wanted to end the current "tit-for-tat" with Clinton.
"I don't want the campaign in this stage to degenerate into so much tit-for-tat back-and-forth that we lose sight why all of us are doing this," he said. "If I hear my own supporters engaging in talk that I think is ungenerous or misleading, or in some way is unfair, then I will speak out forcefully against them, and I hope the other campaigns take the same approach."
Shortly after Obama's comments, Clinton released a statement saying it's time to "reach common ground."
"We differ on a lot of things. And it is critical to have the right kind of discussion on where we stand. But when it comes to civil rights and our commitment to diversity, when it comes to our heroes - President John F. Kennedy and Dr. King – Senator Obama and I are on the same side," the New York Democrat said. “And in that spirit, let's come together, because I want more than anything else to ensure that our family stays together on the front lines of the struggle to expand rights for all Americans.”
– CNN's Alexander Mooney and Chris

Visit: www.Blacks4Barack.homestead.com