Obama Campaign, Democrat Party Spend More Than They Raised In July

Ugly numbers for President Obama and Democrats. Not only does Mitt Romney have a 50% fundraising advantage over Obama so far – which translates into a robust $60 million lead – but both the Obama campaign and the Democrat party spent more than they raised in July.

Mitt Romney extended his cash edge over President Obama in July and entered the final three-plus months of the campaign with about 50 percent more in the bank than the incumbent president.

Romney led Obama in cash on hand at the end of July $185.9 million to $123.7 million, according to numbers released by the Romney campaign and filed with the FEC by Obama’s campaign.

While both campaigns previously announced the amount they raised in July and Romney’s campaign announced its cash on hand total two weeks ago, Obama’s team did not say how much it had in the bank. Reports filed Monday, though, show Obama’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee continued to spend more than they brought in in July and saw their cash on hand fall by about $20 million combined.

Ouch.

Meanwhile, a new book out by a Politico reporter details the Obama campaign’s desperate efforts to fill a stadium they rented for their 2012 campaign. Something they ultimately failed at:

President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign paid nearly $93k to hold a kick-off event at the Ohio State University in May. And, at the time, photos of the event showed large sections of the arena unoccupied, causing the New York Times to write that the kick-off event “had the feeling of a concert by an aging rock star.”

A new ebook published today by Glenn Thrush explains that the empty seats that marred the expensive kick-off event were not because the Obama campaign did not try to fill them:

“In the week or so leading up to the Obama campaign’s official kickoff rally on May 5 at Ohio State University’s basketball arena in Columbus, Obama’s campaign had put out a maximum effort to fill the Schottenstein Center’s eighteen thousand seats. Trawling for warm bodies wasn’t an exercise Team Obama had experienced much in 2008. That was Hillary’s problem. Filling a venue wasn’t even a major issue in the Democratic famine year of 2010, when an Obama midterm rally held on OSU’s quad drew an unexpectedly large crowd. At the time, excited Obama aides hooked up reporters with local officials who confirmed the total— thirty thousand.

The bloom is off the rose, it seems.