Somebody call Guinness -- a race that has already been like no other before it has just been the scene of another broken record. At this point in 2003, George W. Bush had $32.7 million to spend on his reelection campaign; both of the Democratic front-runners in this cycle have broken that record.
Though Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., is leading in national polls, she trails Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., slightly in the tally of cash on hand for the primaries. Obama has $34 million; Clinton has $33.2 million. Clinton actually has more total money than Obama, $45.2 million to $36.3 million, but each has some money set away solely for the general election, in the event that he or she is the nominee; Clinton has $12 million for the general, Obama just $2.3 million.
Meanwhile, the Republican candidates are still running far behind. Byron York, the National Review's White House correspondent, makes an interesting observation in a post at the Corner:
"Going through the presidential candidates' financial reports, it's interesting to see how top Democrats have controlled their spending -- fiscal restraint! -- while some top Republicans are either living beyond their means or are operating close to the edge," York writes. "With the exception of Rudy Giuliani, it appears that the Republicans are not as good as Democrats at managing their money ... We all know John McCain's money problems. But Mitt Romney is burning money at a rate very close to 100 percent. Romney took in $21 million, spent $20.5 million, and has $12 million in cash on hand, with a total debt of $9 million. That debt, of course, represents Romney's personal cash infusions into the campaign, without which he would have run a big deficit in the second quarter and would have ended the period with about $3 million in cash on hand."
Giuliani has $18 million in cash on hand.
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