Sen. John F. Kerry may have a $24.8 million advantage over President George W. Bush in pursuing any recounts that result from Tuesday's election, according to the campaigns' most recent financial filings.

Under Federal Election Commission rules, both candidates are allowed to use remaining funds from their primary election committees to conduct recount activities, which in Kerry's case amounts to just under $45 million. That compares to just more than $16 million left over in the Bush/Cheney primary election committee's coffers.

Those funds, combined with the cash on hand each campaign reported for accounting and legal costs, give Kerry a total of $51.6 million that could possibly be used for potential recounts, according to the campaign's pre-General Election filings. By contrast, the Bush campaign has $26.8 million. Bob Biersack, spokesperson for the Federal Election Commission, said "it's possible" that Kerry could use the leftover $45 million from his primary funds for recounts. "There should not be any problem with them using primary funds for a recount," Biersack told the Center for Public Integrity. "One of the clearly permissible uses would be a transfer to a party and the party could use that money for a recount."

The candidates' funds would not be the only source of cash available for recount efforts. Both political parties are allowed to participate, and as in 2000 the campaigns could establish separate fundraising committees.

In phone calls with the Center, spokesmen for both the Kerry campaign and the Democratic National Committee would not speculate on how they intend to use the $45 million in leftover primary funds.

Good morning. Please allow me to spend a couple of moments talking about the Center for Public Integrity. We are a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that does investigative reporting and research on public policy issues in the United States and around the world. Since 1990 the Center has produced more than 250 investigative reports and 12 books and in the past seven years has been honored 21 times by the Society of Professional Journalists, Investigative Reporters and Editors, and other respected organizations. Called "the center for campaign scoops" by the New Yorker magazine, the Center won the Sigma Delta Chi Public Service award for breaking the Clinton White House "Lincoln Bedroom" scandal in 1996, and The Buying of the President 2000 first disclosed that Enron was candidate Bush's top career patron.

The Center is funded by foundations and individuals and the sale of our publications. We do not accept advertising or contributions from companies, labor unions or governments. We do not take positions or lobby on specific policy or legislative matters. The names of our major donors and other information about the Center are available on our award-winning Web site, www.publicintegrity.org. We gratefully acknowledge the support for this project from the Victor Elmaleh Foundation, Edith and Henry Everett and the Popplestone Foundation.

Enron Corp., the Houston-based energy firm that touched off a financial, legal and political scandal when it declared bankruptcy in December 2001, remains the top career patron of President George W. Bush, whose prolific fundraising in 2003 shattered all previous records for candidates. Enron's employees and political action committee have given more than $600,000 to Bush over the course of his political career, according to a new Center for Public Integrity book, The Buying of the President 2004 (HarperCollins).

In 2003, executives of the reorganized Enron—including Joseph W. Sutton, the company's chairman—continued to contribute to the Bush campaign.

Bush has already raised more money than any other candidate in history in the year before the election, a whopping $85.2 million. That comes in the context of what has already been a record primary season for candidate fundraising. Former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean opted out of the public financing system, which limits what candidates can spend in the primaries, citing the need to challenge Bush's prodigious fundraising as his reason; Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry followed suit, relying on his personal wealth to fuel his campaign. Late entrant Wesley Clark touted the more than $10 million his campaign raised in its first full quarter of fundraising, and even dark horse candidate Dennis Kucinich touted his larger-than-expected campaign coffers on his Web site.

On May 30, 1997, Dick Cheney dispatched a two-page letter to Vice President Al Gore in hopes of staving off new federal regulations that presumably would prove both cumbersome and costly to Halliburton Company, the global oil-field services firm that Cheney had run since 1995.

The letter was obtained exclusively by the Center for Public Integrity through a recent Freedom of Information Act request.

At issue was a proposal by the Environmental Protection Agency, announced some six months earlier, designed to make national air-quality standards more stringent. "We are now hoping to hear from a wide range of the American people," EPA Administrator Carol M. Browner declared upon announcing the proposal, "from scientists and environmentalists to industry experts, small business owners, doctors and parents, to receive the broadest possible public comment and input on this important issue."

Browner got her wish, and then some: both EPA and Gore's office were besieged with comments, with environmentalists and health-care advocates generally lending their support to the proposal and business interests, worried about increased costs for compliance, insisting that the revised standards were not only based on questionable science, but they offered uncertain health benefits and would cause the sort of economic harm that could ripple throughout society.