The most political period begins

Rick Davis the campaign manager for John McCain said that they are looking at a pretty even race, especially state by state in the targeted states. “We are entering one of the most political periods of the whole race,” he said noting that the conventions, debates, and the vice presidential nods will happen in the next 10 weeks. Davis also said that they are gaining ground with the Republican base. “We are also very competitive with independent voters and we’re doing well with disaffected democrats that don’t support Obama.”

“We’ve constantly got to pay attention to the need to excite the base,” Davis said “It’s a party that we have to rebuild and win an election in the process.”

Davis said that the campaign continues to have record fundraising making it five months in a row for records. In July the campaign had and income $26 million with about 600,000 donors. Totaled with RNC donors there are 1.5 million donors to the campaign. Because Mccain is seeking to use public financing in his campaign they will have to stop fundraising in primary account and exhaust those funds by Aug 30. In July the campaign had 2.4 million cash on hand which Davis said they will use to prosecute the campaign in August. “We’ll have a good august,” he said. He explained that the campaign will start the general election full with government and RNC funding. They plan to spend down the primary account in more media buys as well as building up ground operations in states where the Obama campaign is presenting a challenge. So far the McCain campaign has spent $60 million on media buys.

The advertising done during Obama’s trip to the Middle East and Europe gave the Mccain campaign an uptick in Internet fundraising thanks to high hits on the video of the ad on YouTube.