Washington ? Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton lived hand to mouth during the rush of presidential primaries while Democratic rival Sen. Barack Obama outspent her and put money in the bank.

New Federal Election Commission reports show Obama raised at a clip of nearly $2 million a day in February, an open spigot of money that left him with $30 million in the bank for March.

Clinton had her best fundraising month as well, at $34.5 million. But counting her debts to vendors she ended with a net $3 million. And that’s not factoring the $5 million she lent her campaign and has not paid back.

The current respite between primaries – the next one is April 22 in Pennsylvania – may cut back on some of the spending. It also denies the two campaigns the head-to-head contests that drive fundraising.

“Fundraising has always been event-driven,” said Donald Fowler, a former Democratic National Committee chairman. “The American people just don’t sit around trying to think up ways of giving up money. Something has to draw attention to the need.”

Fowler, a superdelegate who has endorsed Clinton, conceded that Obama has a network that is better able to raise money quickly. But Obama himself played down his March fundraising on Friday.

“February was pretty exceptional,” Obama told reporters in Oregon, adding that the campaign surprised even itself with the level of Internet fundraising. “I don’t think we would expect to sustain that pace because we don’t have a primary every week.”

But even though he outspent Clinton 2-to-1 heading into the March 4 contests in Texas and Ohio, he lost both those primaries, though he held the edge in a Texas caucus held the same day. Clinton also won the Rhode Island primary that day. Obama’s only clear victory was in Vermont.

“The Obama campaign spent gobs of money leading up to March 4th and we were vastly outspent in every state and the result was three big wins out of four for Senator Clinton,” said Clinton spokesman Jay Carson.

Still, Obama’s fundraising prowess has made states that initially seemed to heavily favor Clinton, like Texas, more competitive.

On Friday, a month before the primary in Pennsylvania, Obama launched three ads in the state, two of them brand new. One is a 60-second commercial that is mostly biographical; the other two are 30-second spots that portray Obama as a politician who fights special interests and who works in a bipartisan way. He trails Clinton in polls conducted in Pennsylvania.

In a bit of good financial news for Clinton, she made inroads in February with small donors, a group that has mostly flocked to Obama. Clinton raised half of her money – $17 million – in contributions of $200 or less, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute. Obama tapped those donors, many of whom give through the Internet, for $30.5 million.

The protracted Democratic contest has been good for Sen. John McCain, who has locked up the Republican nomination. McCain raised only $11 million in February, a fifth of Obama’s total and a third of Clinton’s.

McCain has picked up his fundraising pace for March, and his advisers say that as long as Obama and Clinton are criticizing each other McCain has a relatively open path to introduce himself to a broader national electorate.

“Right now the two of them are running in individual states against each other, not against John McCain,” said McCain senior adviser Charlie Black.