Kerry Taps Internet Cash To Give Bush A Run For His Money

WASHINGTON, July 23 (AFP) - Massachusetts Senator John Kerry has filled a surprisingly large treasure chest for his White House campaign, tapping the Internet to win enough donations to rival President George W. Bush's famously well-financed political machine.
"Everybody expected George W. Bush to be able to raise 200 million dollars or more against a Democratic candidate limited to 45 million dollars. This did not happen," said Anthony Corrado, a campaign finance expert at the Brookings Institution.
Instead, Kerry followed Bush's lead in choosing not to accept US government campaign funds -- avoiding the spending limits that come along with them -- and gambled that he could raise more money on his own.
For the last four months, Kerry's campaign has outpaced Bush's fundraising, although his purse is still lighter than the incumbent's ahead of the November 2 presidential vote.
Since the start of the campaign, Kerry has raked in 180 million dollars to Bush's 230 million, making this the priciest run for the White House in US history, with both men setting fundraising records for their parties.
But Corrado said "the real story is not the higher contributions, the real story is the broader participation and the role of the Internet."
Howard Dean, the erstwhile front-runner for the Democratic nomination, was the first candidate to figure out how to harness the Internet to pull in a mountain of small contributions from his supporters that gave him an edge early in the race.
The Democratic party took that lesson to heart, and after Dean bowed out, Kerry picked up his Internet strategy.
The record-setting fundraising came after the passage of a new law -- spearheaded by Republican Senator John McCain and Democratic Senator Russ Feingold -- that sought to overhaul the way politicians finance their campaigns.
The law limits personal contributions to 2,000 dollars and bans so-called "soft-money" contributions to parties by companies, organizations, labor unions and individuals for use at the parties' discretion.
Some had feared the law would prevent candidates from raising enough money to mount effective campaigns.
"It should be clear to everybody that the supporters of McCain-Feingold did not intend to chase money away from politics but to chase corrupt money away from politics," said Trevor Potter, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) who helped draft the law.
"Internet fund raising is the chief engine of Democratic fundraising in this campaign," he said at a recent debate on political fundraising.
While Democrats have gotten a solid boost from the Internet, Bush has perfected the more traditional system used in his 2000 campaign, calling on his well-heeled supporters to become "Pioneers" and "Rangers" by asking friends and family for donations.
While soft money disappeared in this campaign, new political groups known as 527s have sprung up. Kerry stands to gain the most in this campaign from the new groups, named for the provision that makes them tax-exempt.
Organizations such as MoveOn.org, which is backed by billionaire investor George Soros, have taken out advertisements and set up websites attacking Bush. The main limit on their spending is that they not coordinate their activities with a political party.
With the rapid rise of groups like MoveOn.org, Potter said the FEC should act to rein in the 527s before the next presidential election in 2008.
After each party holds their convention -- the Democrats next week and the Republicans in late August -- the candidates can again decide whether to accept public funds for their campaigns. That would give each man about 75 million dollars.
So far, neither Kerry nor Bush has ruled out the possibility of again striking out on their own.