Obama’s biggest fund haul in ’12: $181m in Sept

WASHINGTON - President Barack Obama raised $181 million in September, his campaign said on Saturday, in a huge boost for his re-election bid following a limp debate performance against White House rival Mitt Romney. The haul was the biggest monthly cash take by Obama of the 2012 race, and was revealed just a day after supporters disappointed by the debate got another fillip with news that the US unemployment rate dipped below 8%.

It means Obama will have ample money to splash on an advertising blitz in the countdown to the election, exactly a month away on November 6, and with 1.8 million donors in the month is an impressive display of grass roots muscle.

Republican nominee Romney has yet to reveal his monthly fundraising figures for September, but early predictions that he would outspend Obama by a distance appear to have been unfounded . Romney however does have the support of an array of SuperPAC independent fundraising committees financed by rich donors and corporations, that can spend unlimited C sums to attack Obama and outnumber similar Democratic organizations.

Obama's campaign manager Jim Messina alerted supporters to the fundraising coup for the reelection effort and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) in an email on Saturday morning.

"I have some huge news, and I want you to be the first to hear about it," Messina said. "We not only surpassed $10 million donations so far in 2012 to the campaign and the Democratic Party — a historic record for grassroots politics.

"We also raised $181 million in September from 1.8 AR I million Americans — more than 567,000 of whom gave for the first time. That's by far our biggest month yet."

Messina said the average donation was $53 and 98% of contributions amounted to $250 or less and also boasted that the Obama political machine was in full swing ahead of the election. The September figure was just short of the $193 million piled up by Obama and the DNC in the equivalent month of the 2008 election campaign.

He said the campaign opened its 100th field offices in both Ohio and Florida last month and last week registered 10,000 voters in Florida in a single day.

In early voting in Iowa, Messina said 105,000 people had already cast ballots, 62% of whom were Democrats. The release of the fundraising figure came on the second successive morning of good news for the Obama campaign after the president was comprehensively outfoxed by Romney in the first head-to-head debates.