MELISSA BLOCK, host:
Voters in Iowa are about to begin the process of choosing the next president. Tomorrow night, they go to their local party caucuses. It's the earliest the process has ever begun. But just getting to the starting point has already consumed a phenomenal amount of money.
Here to give us an update is NPR's Peter Overby who tracks campaign finance. And Peter, the final reports for fundraising for 2007 are going to be coming in soon. Any sense of what they're going to show?
PETER OVERBY: Well, one of the things that we know is that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton has each raised more than $100 million over the past 12 months, which is just breathtaking. Haven't seen that before…
BLOCK: Ever?
OVERBY: …from two candidates in one campaign. We know that Ron Paul had a surge over the last few weeks. He raised $19.5 million in that surge on, most of it on the Internet. That $19.5 million is 70 percent of all the money he's raised in 2007. One thing that we don't know is how much money Mitt Romney has spent out of his own pocket. He's the richest candidate in the race, and he's already spent $17 million as of September 30th. The campaign has picked up dramatically since then. We don't know how deep he's dug into his pocket after September 30th.
BLOCK: And another big question to keep an eye out is how much of the money that these candidates have raised they've actually spent.
OVERBY: That's something that they're talking about even less than the fundraising side of it. One way to look at it is in the olden days, candidates would take matching funds. And they would be limited to how much they could spend in each state as well as in overall spending on it. The limit for Iowa this year would be about $2 million. $2 million is like nothing in Iowa this year.
BLOCK: And remind us, Peter, who has taken matching funds this year?
OVERBY: OK, of the major candidates, only one has taken matching funds. Seven have qualified. Only John Edwards has started accepting the money.
BLOCK: Apart from the candidates spending their money from their campaign, there are other groups, big independent groups. Peter, how are they spending their money?
OVERBY: Well, the most visible example is triumvirate, EMILY's list, the group for pro-choice Democratic women, AFSCME, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and the American Federation of Teachers. They are working together to identify and move voters for Hillary Clinton. They've spent roughly $1 million on this that I can total. AFSCME has also spent a half million dollars attacking Obama. Other union groups have spent $2 million to help John Edwards, the guy who's taking matching funds and is limited in what he can spend. On the Republican side, the biggest activity is not disclosed. It's by a group called TrustHuckabee.com. It's a nonprofit organization. And in its crazy quilt of disclosure rules that we have, they don't have to disclose very much. But they are running ads for Huckabee and they are even doing precinct organizing for Huckabee.
BLOCK: With all this money and focus being spent on Iowa and then New Hampshire, who's going to have any money left for any of the other primaries?
OVERBY: Right off, we can figure that Obama, Clinton and Romney will. For the others, there's matching funds. It will carry them through the primaries. The problem is that there's an overall spending cap on the matching funds. They can't spend more than $50 million between now and the conventions. And it's hard to find any analyst who thinks that's going to be enough to carry a campaign.
BLOCK: OK, NPR's Peter Overby. Peter, thanks very much.
OVERBY: My pleasure.