McCain Attacks Obama's Fundraising

(CBS)

(WESTERVILLE, OHIO) – "This is a dead even race," John McCain said at a rally here today. "We need to win in this state."

The first part of that statement is probably not true. The second part probably is.

Most polls show McCain trailing Barack Obama, both nationally and in Ohio, although the race for Ohio's 20 electoral votes is tighter than the national polls are.

"Are we behind? Sure. I'm the underdog," McCain said on "Fox News Sunday" this morning. "We're going to be in a tight race and we're going to be up late on election night. I'm confident of that. I've been in too many campaigns, my friend, not to sense that things are headed our way."

What is not headed McCain's way, though, is the kind of money Obama is raising. Obama brought in $150 million in the month of September alone, while McCain, who is taking public financing, has $84 million to spend in September, October, and November. But McCain alleges the kind of money Obama has raised is corrupting the campaign financing system.

"That has unleashed now in presidential campaigns a new flood of spending that will then cause a scandal," McCain said. "Sen. Obama has broken it, and he broke his word to me and the American people when he signed a piece of paper when he was a long shot candidate that he would take public financing if I would."

McCain also criticized the Obama campaign for being open enough about where their contributions were coming from.

"There's $200 million of those campaign contributions – there's no record. They're not reported. You can report online now, $200 million, that we don't know where the money came from. A lot of strange things going on in this campaign," McCain said. "The American people should know where every penny came from. They know where every penny of my campaign contributions came from."