import re

string = "section_category_name = 'computer and equipment expense' and date >= 2015-01-01 and date <= 2015-03-31"

lexer = re.compile(r"'[^']*'|[^ ]+|$")

results = []

buff = []
for match in lexer.finditer(string):
	token = match.group(0) # group 0 is the entire matching string
	
	if token in ('and', ''):
		results.append(' '.join(buff))
		buff = []
	else:
		buff.append(token)

print results