After winning the endorsement of former Secretary of State Colin Powell over the weekend, Sen. Barack Obama said the GOP four-star general would have a role in his campaign as an adviser and revealed that his campaign had raised $150 million in the month of September.

“He will have a role as one of my advisers,” Obama said on NBC’s “Today” in an interview aired Monday, a day after Powell endorsed him. “Whether he wants to take a formal role, whether that’s a good fit for him, is something we’d have to discuss,” Obama said.

On NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday, Powell credited Obama as a “transformational figure” in the nation’s history and voiced disappointment in some of McCain’s campaign tactics and his choice of Sarah Palin as his vice presidential pick.

“I watched Mr. Obama,” in recent weeks, Powell said, and “he displayed a steadiness, an intellectual curiosity, a depth of knowledge … in not just jumping in and changing every day, but showing intellectual vigor.”

In reacting to news of the Powell endorsement, GOP Sen. John McCain, a long-time friend of Powell’s, said, “I respect and continue to respect and admire Secretary Powell.”

The Arizona senator also pointed out on Sunday that his candidacy has the support of four other former secretaries of state, all veterans of Republican administrations: Henry Kissinger, James Baker III, Lawrence Eagleburger and Alexander Haig.

Powell’s endorsement came as news emerged that the Obama camp had raised $150 million in September — obliterating the old record of $66 million it had set only one month earlier.

The Obama campaign has now raised some $600 million dollars toward the Illinois senator’s White House bid. McCain has raised about $250 million.

Obama chose to forgo public financing, leaving him free to raise as much money as possible and bankroll additional advertising and get-out-the-vote efforts. The McCain camp, meanwhile, accepted public financing, limiting it to spending $84 million in September and October.

As Obama shatters fundraising records, some say the whopping figures represent the need for an overhaul of campaign fundraising rules.

“Campaign finance watchdog groups said Sunday that Mr. Obama’s September haul bolstered their arguments for the need to revamp the presidential public financing system to restore its relevancy,” the New York Times wrote. “It is an effort that has recently faltered in Congress.”

“People will look back at 2008 as the year that Barack Obama once and for all destroyed public financing as we know it,” Todd Harris, a Republican strategist who worked on McCain’s 2000 presidential campaign, told the AP of the new numbers. “It will be very difficult four years from now for any candidate to make the case that they should participate in public financing given the obvious financial advantage that Obama has received by opting out.”