THE NATION - Security beefs up early in '08 campaigns - With the race already active, a lot of money is being spent on private firms until the Secret Service takes over.

A Maryland security firm was paid more than $380,000 by the presidential campaign of Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), and provided bodyguards and intelligence for three months, until Obama was assigned Secret Service protection in May.

Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) -- the only presidential candidates under federal protection -- have each spent more on private security than any other candidate. Two Republicans, former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, have also had extensive private protection.

Such moves to tighten security have led to staffing and spending decisions that some campaigns later reversed or revised.

Despite her record as a gun control advocate, Clinton's campaign headquarters is protected by a security consortium that carried online advertising for assault weapons and sniper training.

Earlier this year, Giuliani had bodyguards paid by his private consulting firm -- an expense normally considered a campaign's responsibility. A Romney aide resigned after New Hampshire authorities began investigating his alleged abuses of his security role on the campaign trail.

The security presence on the campaign trail is "more, and starting earlier, than I've ever seen it," said Joseph J. Funk, a former Secret Service agent who heads Global Security Services, the Maryland firm hired to protect Obama from February to May.

Clinton has paid more than $40,000 to private security operations in Virginia and California. Romney has spent at least $15,000 on protection from a Michigan security firm. And Giuliani's bodyguards are expected to add considerably to his costs now that they are being shouldered by his campaign.

The use of private security has become a stopgap in the period before Secret Service protection begins for candidates who survive the early stage of campaigning. Those designations are expected later this year, security experts said.

"Some candidates are going to take their chances out there, but in this day and age, some are going to want to be protected before the Secret Service makes their decision," said Joseph Russo, a former Secret Service agent who handles executive protection for New York-based T&M Protection Resources.