What's going on is now known as "the money primary" - the first significant attempt to gauge the relative strengths of the various candidates by how much dough they can suck out of the political community.
Reports of the massive siphoning for the first quarter of 2007 have Democratic Sen. Hillary Clinton well in the lead, with $26 million plus another $10 million shifted from her successful Senate re-election campaign account of last year.
Sen. Barack Obama has not yet officially registered his fund-raising for the same period, but word from his campaign is that it will be at least $20 million. Former Sen. John Edwards has posted $14 million as his first-quarter take, with Gov. Bill Richardson at $8 million and others trailing.
But the biggest surprise is on the Republican side, where former Gov. Mitt Romney has reported a first-quarter take of $21 million, leading former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani's $15 million, Sen. John McCain's $12.5 million and others far behind.
Only last week, Romney was being dismissed by political crystal-ball gazers because he had dropped from 8 to 3 percent in the most recent Gallup Poll, showing Giuliani and McCain running far ahead of him. His slippage was attributed to the hint from actor and former Sen. Fred Thompson that he might enter the race.
Romney's lead in the money primary demonstrated, if nothing else, the fickleness of early polling based largely on voters' familiarity with candidates, and how an aggressive money-siphoning machine can compensate for lack of public awareness.
Until 1999, candidates spent the 12 months before each presidential election year raising money to qualify for limited federal matching funds, in return for accepting a limit on what they could spend, designed to reduce the influence of money in their campaigns.
But in that year, Republican candidate George W. Bush turned down the federal subsidy, allowing wealthy supporters to "bundle" contributions of like-minded associates into a huge campaign chest. It intimidated most of the rest of the 2000 GOP field out of the race before or during the early primaries.
Bush also opted out in 2004, convincing Democrats Howard Dean and John Kerry also to decline the subsidy. For 2008, most leading candidates are expected to do likewise, shattering the federal matching system and leaving only candidates with less promising fund-raising prospects qualifying for the limited federal money.
According to elections expert Charles Cook, 9 of the 10 major-party nominations from 1984 to 2000 went to the candidate who raised the most money in the pre-election year. In 2004, Dean raised the most but stumbled in the Iowa caucuses and lost to heavy-spending Kerry.
A strong early showing in the money primary is an obvious encouragement to contributors who want to be with a winner, and it is particularly important approaching the 2008 cycle. The bunching up of the caucuses and primaries starting in Iowa and New Hampshire in January and reaching what will approximate a national primary that will include contests in California and New York on Feb. 8.
This means that candidates must be active now introducing and selling themselves to voters in two dozen or more states, relying not only on heavy personal travel but also on expensive television buys in all those markets. Thus they will be making huge outlays in 2007 even as they continue seeking money.
One ray of light for the less prodigious fund-raisers is the Internet. Not only has it proved to be formidable in that effort; the rapid rise in user-friendly sites like You Tube and individual blogging now provides campaigns and their supporters a wide range of opportunities to promote their candidates at low cost.
But that fact is not likely to diminish the intensity or the perceived political significance of the mad, mad dash for lucre - filthy or antiseptic - that will mark the money primary between now and the end of this year. ---
You can respond to this column at juleswitcover@earthlink.net.
