Obama breaks the bank - raises $150 million in September

Where else is the money going?  It's Sunday.  Turn on the TV.  Obama's buying up time on NFL games.  He's bought baseball (and there is sure to be a big audience tonight.

He's even doing two-minute ads now.   And according to Advertising Age, he's all over the most popular cable-TV shows.

Within the last two weeks, the Obama campaign has run ads on the Weather Channel, ESPN, Discover Channel, Animal Planet, History Channel, VH1, Comedy Central, True, Military Channel and A&E. It's also running ads on all the broadcast TV networks.

So far Obama has raised more than $605 million during the campaign and has 3.1 million donors.  The campaign reports that the average donation is $86.

McCain's reaction

Not surprisingly, John McCain mentioned the fundraising efforts this morning in the context of public financing.  Earlier this year, Barack Obama announced he would opt-in for public financing as long as his opponent did as well.  McCain announced he would.  Obama backed away and has received much criticism from McCain thereafter -- including this morning.

"[Senator Obama] broke his word to me and the American people when he signed a piece of paper when he was a longshot candidate that he would take public financing if I would. He signed a piece of paper,"  McCain said appearing on FOX News Sunday.

"Then, twice on national television he looked into the camera with Senator Clinton sitting there and said, "I'll sit down and talk to John McCain before I make a decision on public financing or not." He didn't tell the truth," he added.

Buying the election?

As for the record amount, McCain said a case could be made that Obama is buying the election before adding, "We're not going to let that happen."

McCain's concern?  First this election and then the future of campaigns.

"The dam is broken," he said.  "We're now going to see huge amounts of money coming into political campaigns, and we know history tells us that always leads to scandal."

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