Mitt Romney, RNC joint fundraising booms to $40.1 million in April

Mitt Romney's general election fundraising
is off to strong start and his Super PACs will
provide hundreds of millions more Mitt Romney didn't become the presumptive Republican nominee'a status that enables him to coordinate fundraising with the Republican National Committee'until April 23, but he nonetheless had a very strong month:

Mitt Romney and the Republican National Committee raised $40.1 million last month and finished April with $61.4 million on hand, a GOP source confirms to POLITICO.

President Obama and the Democratic National Committee raised $43.6 million during the month. We don't know their cash-on-hand, but they entered April with just over $100 million in the bank.

May is the first month in which both Romney and Obama are able to raise money on equal footing, so the fundraising reports we'll get one month from now will be the first apples-to-apples comparison of the two campaigns.

Keep in mind that Romney's fundraising isn't just limited to his campaign and the RNC: he also has a network of Super PACs backing him'and he's allowed to help them raise funds. Between his campaign and those Super PACs, Romney is in very strong position to dominate the spending battle. Yesterday, for example, Karl Rove's Super PAC announced it would match the Obama campaign's $25 million ad campaign with a $25 million ad campaign of its own.

There are also Super PACs aligned with President Obama, but they don't have nearly as much money as the Romney groups. Priorities USA just launched an ad campaign focused on Bain, but while the $4 million it is putting behind the campaign is real money, it still falls short of not just Rove's Super PAC but also the Romney-aligned Restore Our Future, American Future Fund, and Americans For Prosperity Super PACs and independent groups.