Hillary Triples War Chest Record

Hillary Clinton proved her fund raising prowess by nearly tripling the previous record for the first quarter of a presidential campaign, amassing $26 million in donations.   Some $10 million appears to have been raised in the final 1 1/2 weeks of the quarter, the Washington Post reports, when Bill joined Hillary for huge galas around the country.

Clinton added another  $10 million from her Senate campaign coffers to the presidential war chest, for a total of $36 million.  But the huge lead may be short-lived: The Obama campaign has not yet released the results of fund raising efforts among its reported 83,000 contributors .The previous record for the three-month period was Al Gore's $8.9 million in 1999. (More Barack Obama stories.)