October Receipts Top $1 Million, Dukakis Reports

WASHINGTON — Despite his presidential campaign’s recent troubles, Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis collected more than $1 million in contributions in October, according to campaign treasurer Robert Farmer, who described this as “one of our better months.”

The October receipts bring to $9.1 million the total donations for the year for Dukakis, who leads all other Democratic candidates in fund raising. Farmer said that about 75% of the October contributions came from outside Massachusetts, which he said made it the best month so far for out-of-state contributions. “It shows we are a national campaign,” he said.

The Dukakis campaign was caught up in the furor surrounding Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s forced exit from the Democratic presidential campaign when it was disclosed that the campaign’s manager, John Sasso, had distributed a videotape showing that Biden had plagiarized part of a speech by British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock. Sasso then resigned, and the embarrassed Dukakis accepted responsibility for Sasso’s actions and apologized.

Farmer said the reason for disclosing the fund-raising figures for the month, instead of waiting for the end of the next quarter as is customary, was to demonstrate that “ the campaign is on track.”