And we turn now to the campaign trail. Just one day after closing the books on fundraising for the first quarter, some early returns on what many are calling the first Primary.

Senator Hillary Clinton's campaign announced today it has raised a record 26 million dollars. And former Senator John Edward's campaign raised more than 14 million, nearly twice as much as he raised for the same period in 2004. No announcement yet from Senator Obama's campaign. Now John Hardwood is CNBC's chief Washington correspondent. He joins us tonight. John, what does this new information mean for the campaigns?

Most importantly, John, it means Hillary Clinton remains the front-runner in this Democratic race in every respect including financially. But she's got a tougher race than most people had expected. Don't have that number from Barack Obama. But we expect it to top 20 million dollars, with him reporting more donors and perhaps more room to grow as he is narrowing her lead in the poll. John Edward who is still ahead in Iowa appears on track as well to have enough money to compete it. Remember the goal in fundraising, John, not to beat your opponent, but have enough to get your message outrun a rival campaign.

What do we know about fundraising on the Republican side?

This is fascinating and even more influx. We don't have a number from any of these nervous Republican campaigns yet. But we expect that John McCain, Rudy Giuliani, the two leaders in the polls would be under 20 million dollars. That's an opening for Mitt Romney. If he can do better than that, might kick start his campaign after some of the bruise he has taken over full flops in the last couple of months.

John Hardwood in Washington, John, Thank you.

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Kick start :Start (a motor cycle ,etc) by pushing down a lever with one's foot
Flop :Total failure (of a book ,play ,etc .)