Money piling up for a new record

WASHINGTON - President Bush and Democratic nominee-to-be John Kerry are on track to spend nearly a half-billion dollars vying for the White House this year, making it the most expensive presidential race in history.

Bush already has reached his goal of raising a record $170 million, with more fund raising to come. His supporters believe he could easily reach $200 million or more -- and that's before he gets a government grant of about $75 million in September for his general-election campaign.

Kerry has set a fund-raising goal of about $105 million and is expected to take the $75 million in full public financing for the general election.

That would put presidential spending in the $455 million range -- not counting the tens of millions of dollars the Democratic and Republican parties and outside groups will pour in.

The 2000 race holds the record -- Bush and Democratic nominee Al Gore raised about $290 million total. Bush raised a record $106 million for the primaries while Gore took public money and was limited to about $49 million in primary spending.

Bush started March with $110 million in the bank, a campaign finance report Bush filed Friday showed. Kerry's February campaign finance report is due today at the Federal Election Commission.

Bush took in $13.7 million in February and has raised more than $8 million this month, his latest finance report and donations posted on his campaign Web site through March 9 show. The campaign held several fund-raisers in the past week and continued raising money online, putting it safely at or possibly over the $170 million mark.

One pro-Kerry group, the Media Fund, on Friday disclosed the names of its individual donors. It has raised at least $3.4 million from them since November, including $1 million each from Ohio business executive Peter Lewis and Hollywood executive Steve Bing. Other givers included actors Paul Newman, $25,000; Kevin Bacon, $7,500; and Chevy Chase, $2,500. -- ASSOCIATED PRESS

Web lets you see what neighbor gave

NEW YORK -- Want to find out how much your neighbors are contributing to candidates for president?

Just visit the Web site fundrace.org and type your address and ZIP code into the "Neighbor Search" tool. You will get a list of what those who live closest to you gave to candidates last year, if the amount was at least $200.

Your nearest neighbors are listed first, thanks to a technology called geocoding, which matches street addresses with longitude and latitude data. Visitors also can search by names.

Presidential candidates are required to disclose contributions of $200 or more, and the Federal Election Commission makes databases available for download.

Campaign contribution data through Dec. 31 are currently available, and the site's developer, Michael Frumin, plans to add more information as it becomes available.

Frumin said Friday that 30,000 to 40,000 people have conducted 100,000 searches since the feature was launched on Wednesday.

Fundrace.org is a project of Eyebeam, a New York organization that explores the intersection of arts and sciences.

Other sites have more extensive databases and search capacity.

Opensecrets.org, run by the Center for Responsive Politics, lets you search by state, occupation or employer and has data going back to 1989. It also permits searching of so-called soft money donations to party organizations.

The FEC site, http://www.fec.gov/, also lets you do that using its "advanced search." -- ASSOCIATED PRESS