PASADENA, Calif. – More than $44,000 in pledges have been made to the California/Nevada Credit Union League's federal Political Action Committee (PAC) during the league's first-ever PAC phone- a-thon. Credit union leaders manned the telephones at Wescom Credit Union, calling their colleagues in an effort to raise $50,000. Additional pledges are expected from those who were not reached in the round of calling. Concerns about whether the federal PAC would run out of money before the general election – forcing the national PAC to subsidize races in California and Nevada – prompted the phone-a-thon, league officials said. A raffle used to raise funds at the league's annual meeting and convention – the PAC's major fund-raising event – fell short last year in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attack on the U.S. It raised half the amount of the previous year, officials said. "We had to prime the pump so we could be involved in the general election cycle," said David L. Chatfield, league president and chief executive officer. He said another phone-a-thon was a possibility.