Obama and Romney Lead in Fundraising

The Los Angeles Times reports

Frenzied fundraising by presidential contenders this week served to underscore the bracing reality of the 2012 campaign: When it comes to money, President Obama and Mitt Romney occupy a plateau far above everyone else.

Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, began the week with a carefully staged fundraising event that drew $10 million in pledges — an amount that, even if ultimately not fully realized, was meant as a brush-back pitch at his opponents. After the Las Vegas event, the Republican also suggested that he hadn't ruled out spending some of his own substantial fortune on the campaign, as he did when he ran in 2008.

Even more daunting to competitors: Romney has more than 30 fundraisers planned before the end of June.

The same day Romney held his event, President Obama spoke at two Democratic Party fundraisers in Washington, raising an estimated $1 million. The president, who raised more than $750 million in 2008, was reported to have gathered an additional $2 million at two fundraisers in Boston on Wednesday —- and then more for Democrats at two additional events in Washington on Thursday.

Other Republican contenders have been scrambling to compete with the front-runners in an election contest expected to cost far more than the $2.4 billion spent in the last presidential election.

"The challenge is going to be, for the other candidates, to see where they can make their own money," said Norm Ornstein, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.