Who’s Got the Money?

It sounded like a stunning show of support. On Wednesday, the day after his loss to John McCain in New Hampshire, Mitt Romney raised more than $5 million for his campaign—not too shabby for a candidate struggling to regain momentum after losing the first two major contests of the presidential race. "An extraordinary success," Romney said of his day of fund-raising.

But if you look a little closer, the numbers weren't exactly what they seemed. According to the campaign, $3.5 million of that money—more than half of the total raised—was designated for the general election. In other words, Romney can't touch that cash unless he becomes the nominee, which is hardly guaranteed at this point. The real number that counts: $1.5 million, which is how much Romney raised for the primary. It's still a big number, but nothing close to the momentum his campaign talked up.

Romney isn't the only one trying to play the expectations game when it comes to fund-raising in the aftermath of New Hampshire. With the campaign shifting toward bigger—and more expensive states—how much money a candidate has in the bank could determine his or her future in the race.

We still don't know exactly where the candidates stand financially. The campaigns wrapped up their latest fund-raising quarter on Dec. 31, but they don't have to disclose how much they officially raised and spent until Jan. 30, the day reports are due at the Federal Election Commission. Some of the candidates have put out partial numbers, as well as tentative totals raised in the early weeks of this year, but we don't really know who has the cash to make it through the long haul.

Heading into New Hampshire, rumors swirled that Hillary Clinton's campaign was broke, a charge her campaign vigorously denied. Yet Terry McAuliffe, Clinton's national finance chairman who had been traveling with the senator in Iowa, headed back to D.C. on the eve of the New Hampshire primary to work the phones and raise cash. (He returned to the Granite State in time for results.) On Wednesday McAuliffe announced that Clinton had raised $24 million for the primary in the last three months of 2007—though he declined to say how much cash the campaign had in the bank. After her narrow victory in New Hampshire, supporters pumped an additional $1.1 million into her campaign coffers on Wednesday, and according to aides she's got an additional $5 million in online commitments. "We are thrilled and pumped up here," said Jonathan Mantz, Clinton's national finance director, in a conference call with supporters earlier this week.

But Barack Obama isn't hurting for cash either. Though he raised less than Clinton in the last three months of 2007—$22.5 million in primary funds—he's raised megabucks in the early weeks of 2008, in spite of coming up short in New Hampshire. According to the Obama campaign, the senator raised $7 million in the first week of the year—when he won big in Iowa—and another $1 million this week. The campaign has not said how much cash Obama has in the bank.