All Blog Posts from From The Road

From CBS News' Maria Gavrilovic:

(JACKSONVILLE, Fla.) Barack Obama today defended his decision to opt out of public financing, arguing that the system cannot control outside lobbyist groups who will launch personal attacks against him and his wife.

“We’ve already seen attacks on my wife from the Tennessee Republican party,” Obama told reporters, “I don’t think that I am off the wall here to see that a lot of outside groups that are potentially going to be going after us hard.”

He said his commitment to overhaul campaign financing stands; however, he argued that he is in a better position to withstand Republican attacks if he doesn’t partake in it.

Obama said he will have to campaign harder in states like Florida in order to change misconceptions about him.

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From CBS News' Maria Gavrilovic:

(WASHINGTON) Barack Obama announced this morning that he is opting out of public financing in video message sent to supporters.

“I have an important announcement and I wanted all of you – the people who built this movement from the bottom-up – to hear it first,” Obama said, “We’ve made the decision not to participate in the public-financing system for the general election. This means we’ll be forgoing more than $80 million in public funds during the final months of this election.”

Throughout the video message, Obama called the public financing system “broken” and argued that his Republican opponents are likely to take advantage of it.

“John McCain’s campaign and the Republican National Committee are fueled by contributions from Washington lobbyists and special interest PACs. And we’ve already seen that he’s not going to stop the smears and attacks from his allies running so-called 527 groups, who will spend millions and millions of dollars in unlimited donations.”

Obama argued that his campaign has already changed the way that campaign funds are raised, noting that the majority of his donations are low dollar contributions. This is an argument that he has made for many months now, although he never definitely ruled out public financing until today.

The decision comes as somewhat of a surprise because Obama has been a staunch supporter of public financing for many years now. After announcing his candidacy in February, 2007, Obama said he would consider participating in the public financing system for the general election. He argued that if both the Republican and Democratic nominee would opt to receive public funding, the system could be preserved.

However, for over a year now, Obama has broken fundraising records often times exceeding even the campaigns own projections. In April, he took in $31 million in one month most of which came from small donations. The campaign projects that they could raise as much a $300 million of the general election.

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