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GREENSBORO, Georgia (Reuters) - President Bush's reelection campaign has exceeded its fund-raising goal of $170 million nearly five months ahead of schedule, cementing its cash advantage over Democrat John Kerry in the hard-fought presidential race, Bush campaign officials said on Friday.

 

Bush has raised more than $182 million -- far more than any campaign in history -- and has begun to shift his focus to helping the Republican Party tighten its grip on Congress, officials said.

 

In the first quarter of 2004 alone, the Republican president topped the $50 million raised by Kerry, a Bush campaign official said on condition of anonymity.

 

"We have exceeded our stated goal of raising $170 million" before the Republican convention in August, the campaign aide told reporters traveling with the president. The total shatters the $100 million record Bush set in his 2000 contest against Democrat Al Gore.

 

Bush's campaign has not released first quarter figures but said it had raised $158.2 million by the end of February.

 

The Kerry campaign says it is more than halfway to its goal of raising $80 million before the Democratic National Convention in July.

 

Bush met privately on Friday with his most prolific fund-raisers at the sprawling Greensboro, Georgia plantation owned by Mercer Reynolds, a Bush family friend and the finance chief of the president's 2004 campaign.

 

Scott Stanzel, spokesman for the Bush campaign, called the private meeting an "appreciation" session. Bush met with the 550 fund-raisers and guests in private, and then joined them for dinner along with his brother, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.

 

Bush campaign sources said the money continues to come in strongly to the campaign, and the next report will say the amount of donations coming in through the Internet and mail exceeds that of the major donors program.

 

These sources said there have been days when the mail processing center has had a hard time keeping up. While the Bush campaign never had a single million-dollar day in the 2000 campaign, there have been several in the last few weeks.

 

On Thursday, Bush headlined a fund-raising gala in Washington that raised a total of $7 million for House Republican candidates.

i don't think all the money in the world will be able to save his re-election...