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.