Romney beats Obama in fundraising for May

Romney campaign has raised nearly $77 million, beating Democrats only hours after Obama proudly announced scraping up $60 million in May. This is the first time that Romney has outraised Obama since the campaigning by both parties began.

The Republican National Committee (RNC) announced on Thursday that the campaign had raked $76.8 million with another $107 million in the bank for all of the committees, pushing that the voters were turning away from the president. “We are encouraged by the financial support from a broad range of voters," Romney Victory National Finance chairman Spencer Zwick said in a statement. "Voters are making an investment because they believe that it will benefit the country.”

Obama campaign has not released their figure. However, last month, they were reported to have raised $139 million.

Ben LaBolt, spokesman for the Obama campaign, said he knew this was coming and given Romney’s connections with some huge donors, this was hardly a surprise. "The Republican National Committee and the Romney campaign just established their joint committee, which means that all the primary donors who had written the maximum contribution during the primary can now go back and make that same contribution for the general election," LaBolt said, referring to federal contribution limits on campaigns, according to a report by Reuters.

Like LaBelt pointed out that most of this money was directed from a few large donors supporting Romney for the President. Last month, when the Romney campaign announced raising $40 million, the actual Federal Election Commission filings saw only $11.4 million going to the campaign, while an equal amount went to RNC and the rest to Romney’s Victory Fund.

While Obama’s advisers are worried that a huge chunk of this money will be used by the conservative groups to make ads attacking the record of the president, LaBolt says May’s record will now encourage Obama supporters to donate more and beat Romney in the following months.

"That should serve as a clarion call to our supporters and our donors to give now and give again so that not only can we be on the air, but can we build the largest grass-roots campaign in history across the country," he said.

LaBelt also said that the campaign was now focused on building a strong donor base while dismissing the notion that May’s figures are any indication of Romney’s victory in the November election. He gave the example of John Kerry, who had outraised Bush at this point in 2004, but still it was Bush who won in the end.