Clinton outpaced Obama in fourth quarter fundraising

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) outraised Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) in the fourth quarter of 2007, and her national campaign chairman guaranteed she will overtake Obama in funds raised this month despite an early deficit.

Clinton raised $24 million in primary funds in the fourth quarter and has added $3 million this month, campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe told supporters and media on Wednesday.

{mosads}The former total narrowly outpaced Obama, whose campaign announced in a memo earlier in the day that it raised $23.5 million during the quarter, all but $1 million of which was for the primary.

Obama’s camp, though, said the Illinois senator raised more than $8 million during the first eight days of January, which included five days after his Jan. 3 win in the Iowa caucus. 

Despite this, McAuliffe went so far as to promise that Clinton would outraise Obama this month. He said she has raised more than $1 million online since her victory in New Hampshire on Tuesday night, asserting fundraising momentum from the unexpected victory that seemed to resurrect her candidacy after a loss in Iowa.

“This is an opportunity for us to really knock the ball out of the park,” McAuliffe told fundraisers.

Clinton Finance Director Jonathan Mantz and McAuliffe also sought to flex the campaign’s muscles on the conference call, telling what they described as hundreds of supporters that it wants them all to raise at least $10,000 this month in preparation for the Feb. 5 “national primary.”

Obama campaign manager David Plouffe pointed to his candidate’s January total and hundreds of thousands of small donors and said it retains a leg up.

“We continue to build a grassroots movement that makes us best-positioned to compete financially in the primaries and caucuses coming up,” Plouffe said in the memo.