On January 16, 2007, Senator Barack Obama announced that he would form a presidential exploratory committee. “For the next several weeks, I am going to talk with people from around the country, listening and learning more about…” He declared his candidacy the next month, on February 10, 2007.
Federal election law calls this stage “testing the waters.” A possible candidate may raise and spend money on “polling, traveling and making telephone calls” to decide whether to run. While the person is only testing the waters, an exploratory committee does not have to register or report to the Federal Election Commission. If the person decides not to run, “there would have been no obligation to report the monies received and spent.”