WASHINGTON – New York tops the nation in coughing up campaign cash to candidates in the 2008 White House race, and hometown hopeful Hillary Rodham Clinton has collected the most in the Empire State.
New Yorkers have cut checks totaling nearly $37 million in the frenzied dash for the White House, pushing the total take of presidential wannabes to an eye-popping $265 million in the first six months of the year.
The gold rush also hit California, where candidates collected $35.2 million, second only to New York.
Floridians came in a distant third, chipping in $13 million, according to an analysis by washingtonpost.com.
Federal campaign records show Clinton has collected a staggering $14 million from New Yorkers, accounting for 25 percent of the $53 million she’s raised during her six-month Democratic campaign.
Former New York mayor and GOP front-runner Rudy Giuliani pocketed a pretty penny on his home turf, too, pulling in $7 million.
Clinton’s rising rival Barack Obama helped himself to a healthy slice of the Big Apple, raising $6 million to grow his pack-leading war chest to $58 million.
And he thumped Clinton in his home state of Illinois, where he took home $7 million. That’s more than $5 million more than the former first lady squeezed out from her childhood home state.
The federal records show Obama with $34 million remaining in the bank and Clinton $33 million.
Their campaign armies appear evenly matched, too. Obama paid $3.2 million in salaries over the past three months, while Clinton dished out $2.5 million, though she owes money to high-priced consultants such as pollster Mark Penn.
Meanwhile yesterday, Clinton won the endorsement of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a cause celebre of some Democrats who believe the Bush administration maliciously revealed his wife, Valerie Plame, worked for the CIA.