It is reported that President Obama’s campaign has spent $135 million during the month of February which is about $3 million more than was spent by Romney, Santorum, and the remainder of the Republican contenders combined. That’s a lot of cash for just one month, folks.
Obama’s team spent much of that cash for campaign offices, which are now placed in every state, while Romney and the rest of the Republican clown club has had to spent their individual piles of cash on advertisements, travel, rallies, and so forth.
As is natural for the Republican Party, they take issue with a report that Obama has some 500 paid staff with quite a few of them in Chicago, that being Obama’s campaign headquarters.
With offices in nearly every state, the campaign also faces rising overhead. Through the first two months of the year, Obama spent approximately $1.1 million on computer equipment, $435,000 in rent and utilities, $305,000 on telephones, and $19,000 on office supplies, federal filings show.
"We're building the largest grass-roots campaign in history," campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said. "You can see it here, but it's really happening in the states."
The core of Obama's operation is packed into the sixth floor of Chicago's Prudential building, where 300 staffers sit side by side at long rows of tables, working from laptops and cellphones. Colorful college pennants hang from the ceiling and often represent key swing states: the University of North Carolina, Ohio State and the University of Michigan. Need a designer T-shirt or bumper sticker? A room managed by two staffers houses a swelling collection of campaign memorabilia for sale.
In one corner, more than a dozen workers field questions from journalists scattered across the country. Elsewhere, others coordinate media appearances for Obama's high-profile supporters. Other staffers focus on fundraising, voter identification, social media and campaign-finance reporting.
It must be nice to throw around millions of dollars for a $400,000 per year job. All of those perks that you and I do not hear about after a president leaves office must be worth the expense or no one in their right mind would want the job.