WASHINGTON -- A furious month of non-stop fundraising paid of for Mitt Romney as his presidential campaign reported a $33 million haul in June, according to the campaign's Federal Election Commission filing.
That $33 million is part of a previously reported $106 million brought in by the three political committees working to send Romney to the White House. In addition to the campaign itself, these include the Republican National Committee and the joint fundraising effort called Romney Victory, which transferred $8.6 million into the campaign's coffers in June.
The Romney total for June dwarfed that raised by the political committees supporting President Barack Obama's reelection by approximately $35 million. The Obama campaign responded to the burst in fundraising by its Republican rivals with a flurry of email solicitations, including one from the president with the subject line, "I will be outspent."
Despite both Romney and Obama promoting last month's fundraising disparity, the official Romney campaign committee was again out-raised by the official Obama campaign committee, as it has been every single month of the 2012 contest. The Obama campaign pulled in $45.9 million in June -- $12 million more than the Romney campaign did. The GOP advantage came in fundraising by Romney Victory, which will end up sending tens of millions of dollars to the state parties due to restrictions on how money can be donated to political campaigns.
Romney's June fundraising took him across the country in rapid-fire succession -- San Antonio on the 6th, Salt Lake City on the 8th, Atlanta on the 11th and the D.C. area on the 12th. The biggest event occurred over the June 22-24 weekend, when 700 donors and Republican luminaries gathered in Park City, Utah, for a massive fundraiser.
These mass donor events helped to milk the demographic that has powered Romney's campaign up to this point: max-out contributors. Every individual is allowed to give a maximum of $5,000 to a candidate's campaign committee per election cycle -- $2,500 for a primary and $2,500 for the general contest. Donors giving between $2,500 and $5,000 have been the biggest source of Romney's funds since the beginning of his campaign. In June, max-out donors accounted for $12.3 million of the $33 million haul, which is a smaller amount than in May and a much lower percentage than in previous months.
That lower percentage is largely due to the Romney campaign's posting its best small-donor fundraising month ever. The campaign brought in $9.8 million from donors giving less than $200 in June, for 30 percent of its total. Romney had never before raised more than 11 percent of monthly contributions from rank-and-file donors.
The campaign's biggest small-donor day began on June 28 after the Supreme Court upheld most of the Affordable Care Act. The next day, Romney's team announced that they had pulled in $4.3 million in the last 24 hours.
Examination of the campaign's FEC filing for June 28-29 reveals that small donors likely gave more than half of the money donated in reaction to the health care ruling. The filing itemizes just over $2 million, which by definition did not come from small donors because only contributions of $200 or more (including aggregate contributions) must be itemized. Moreover, some of those larger contributions were surely planned days or weeks earlier, as wealthier donors often do. The small donations were more likely spur-of-the-moment decisions. Therefore, more than half of the money that Romney received off reaction to the Supreme Court's ruling seems to have come from rank-and-file donors.
The campaign spent $27.5 million in June, or less than it raised, and finished the month with $22.5 million in cash on hand.
The biggest campaign expense was, as usual, television advertising -- $10.4 million in June. That's more than double the $4.4 million spent in May.
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