A $100 contribution Sumner resident Angela Berg gave Sen. Barack Obama today was the 250,000th donation collected by the Democratic presidential candidate. An Obama spokeswoman told me that the Illinois senator called Berg tonight to thank her helping to meet the campaign's goal of a quarter million donors by midnight Saturday, the end of second-quarter fundraising for presidential candidates.

Berg teaches high school in the Auburn School District. Before she knew she was No. 250,000, she wrote on Obama's website where the campaign has been tallying donations as the deadline approached:

"I echo many of the same sentiments other donors have posted.
Supporting Barack Obama is one of the strongest convictions I've ever had! He represents the integrity, respect, honesty, wisdom, trust, logic, and inspiration our country NEEDS. While he has already proven that individuals CAN make a difference, his campaign has shown that individuals ARE the difference. I think that's why there are so many people, from all walks of life, who believe in him, need him, and want him as our next president!"

The AP reports tonight:

The Obama campaign said it believes the number of donors is a record for six months of fundraising. Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean built a reputation for unprecedented grass-roots support when 70,000 people contributed about $10.5 million in the first two quarters of 2003. Like Dean, much of Obama's money comes in small-dollar donations made over the Internet.

MORE: Berg told me by e-mail tonight that she feels like she won the lottery. It's easy to be cynical about politics, of course. But it is hard not to sense the excitement this woman felt. She says when the campaign called her to say Obama would call her soon, she locked herself in her bedroom, hung up on her dentist when he called and told her husband to use his cell phone to call his mother. She said she was "freaking out" and wrote down some things she wanted to say. She promptly forgot most of them when the candidate called.

He was so cool sounding...easy-going, natural. Of course he thanked me for contributing, and I, in turn, thanked him for giving me the opportunity to be part of his campaign*. He asked me about my job, how long I'd been teaching, what my school was like. I told him that it [Auburn Riverside High School] is pretty socio-economically split: we have both really wealthy and low-income families in our area. He asked how I dealt with that in the classroom... said how important he thought my job was. He asked about my family and joked that I must be pretty busy because I have a three-year-old son. He said that he appreciated my contribution because he knows that Washington teachers aren't paid [extravagantly]. I just told him that I was happy to invest in something I support so whole-heartedly. He said he'd be thinking about me and people like me during tonight's debate... We talked for about five minutes. I feel like I'm the luckiest person in the world because when Senator Obama came to Seattle on June 1st, I was one of the few people asked to go on stage to stand behind him in the Qwest Center. I thought I already cashed in my good karma when I got to shake his hand...but tonight? the phone call?? oh, man!