UPDATE: CNN covers Obama $7.2m online fundraising

Since I yelled at them for it earlier, here's some props to CNN for tacking it on to the ticker.
Obama raises $7.2 million since Super Tuesday

NEW ORLEANS (AP) – Democratic Sen. Barack Obama has raised $7.2 million for his presidential campaign since the first polls closed on Super Tuesday night, his campaign said Thursday, a remarkable figure that is causing concern among supporters of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Meanwhile Thursday, the Clinton campaign asked Obama to debate once a week, but he demurred.

Obama, riding a wave of fundraising from large donors and small Internet contributors, also raised $32 million in January.

Rest of the story below.

rest of the story:

Clinton acknowledged Wednesday that she loaned her campaign $5 million late last month as Obama was outraising and outspending her heading into Feb. 5 Super Tuesday contests. Some senior staffers on her campaign also are voluntarily forgoing paychecks as the campaign heads into the next round of contests.

While not matching Obama's pace, Clinton also saw an online surge of donations — raising $4 million from 35,000 new contributors since midnight Super Tuesday, Clinton campaign aides said.

Obama and Clinton outpaced all candidates in 2007, with each raising $100 million.

The Obama campaign said on its Web site that $7.2 million has been received since Tuesday evening. Campaign spokesmen said they were confident the figure was accurate.

Buoyed by strong fundraising and a primary calendar in February that plays to his strengths, Obama plans a campaign blitz through a series of states holding contests this weekend and will compete to win primaries in the Mid-Atlantic next week and Hawaii and Wisconsin the following week.

He campaigned in Louisiana Thursday. The state holds its contest Saturday.

Clinton, with less money to spend and less confident of her prospects in the February contests, will instead concentrate on Ohio and Texas, large states with primaries March 4 and where polling shows her with a significant lead. She even is looking ahead to Pennsylvania's primary April 22, believing a large elderly population there will favor the former first lady.

In a sign of Clinton's increasing concern about Obama's growing strength, her campaign manager, Patti Solis, sent a letter Thursday to the Obama campaign seeking five debates between the two candidates before March 4.

"I'm sure we can find a suitable place to meet on the campaign trail," Solis wrote. "There's too much at stake and the issues facing the country are too grave to deny voters the opportunity to see the candidates up close."

Obama rejected a debate proposed as soon as this Sunday to be broadcast on ABC, but his campaign spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Thursday, "there will definitely be more debates, we just haven't set a schedule yet."

Donate! Donate! Donate! This story is because of all of us. Every single person who donated money yesterday has a piece of that story. No matter how much you put in, you contributed to that 7.2 million. You watched with me while that little ticker climbed, and occasionally broke entirely under the force of our donations. We have done a great thing, and I'm proud of us.

Easy donation link here

(Old) UPDATE: Bloomberg and Yahoo (thanks to Bloomberg) are reporting the fundraising news, good work!

Feb. 7 (Bloomberg) -- Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama raised almost $6 million after the Feb. 5 voting contests, all of which came from online donations.

Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe said in a letter to supporters that $3 million was raised the evening after Tuesday's primaries and caucuses. A live ticker attached to his e-mail, showing donations, recorded $5.8 million as of 11:30 p.m. Eastern on Wednesday.

In total, Plouffe said, more than 650,000 people have contributed to the Illinois senator's campaign.

The announcement came the same day that Senator Hillary Clinton of New York said she loaned her presidential campaign $5 million last month. Shortly after announcing the loan, Clinton sent out a fundraising e-mail seeking to raise $3 million in three days.

Clinton's loan ``shows the effect of the success of Obama's fundraising in January, which stretched the Clinton campaign's resources, and even then her campaign was unable to match him,'' said Anthony Corrado, a professor of government at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.

``The Clinton campaign just announced that Hillary and Bill Clinton injected $5 million of their personal fortune into her campaign a few days ago,'' Plouffe wrote. ``Thanks to you, we have raised more than $3 million since the polls closed on February 5th. But we have no choice -- we must match their $5 million right now.''

Record January

Clinton raised around $13 million in January, excluding the $5 million loan, campaign spokesman Phil Singer said. Obama, by contrast, collected $32 million, the most ever raised by a Democrat in January of an election year, $28 million of which was raised in online donations, the campaign said.

Clinton won eight states holding primaries and caucuses Tuesday, including New York, California and New Jersey. Illinois Senator Obama won 13 states, including Illinois and Missouri.

Plouffe told reporters on Tuesday that Obama's fundraising counterbalances Clinton's advantages of name recognition and political infrastructure, allowing the campaign to remain competitive and to advertise in states through April.

``We think we're going to have the money we need to wage vigorous campaigns,'' he said.

Incidentally, I was reading that Bloomberg News story before I came in to work this morning, about 45 minutes before the CNN story came on. Boy, that crack reporting team at CNN doesn't let anything get by it!