Hotline is reporting that, according to his campaign, John McCain is going to fall short of his campaign’s fundraising goals for the first quarter of 2007.
Sen. John McCain said his presidential campaign would not meet its fundraising goals this quarter, and his campaign advisers acknowledged that ex-MA Gov. Mitt Romney may wind up raising more.
“We’re going to pay a price for it because we got a late start,” McCain told reporters in New Hampshire. “We’re not going to meet the goals we had.” He later said he did not know whether Romney would outpace him, but his advisers did not downplay that possibility. They also did not rule out finishing first.
McCain contends that his exploratory committee’s opening in December and the rush of the busy holiday season did not allow his campaign to begin fundraising in earnest until January. But once that month began, owing in part to a busy Senate schedule, McCain attended only two fundraisers and only two in February. There are twenty scheduled for all of this month, and another twenty in April.
Following up on the recent anecdotal report of McCain’s need to scale back a Pennsylvania fundraiser 60%, it’s likely that his March may not be stellar, even with twenty events planned. But while McCain campaign co-chair Tom Ridge tried to explain away the failure of that event in his home state on the grounds that donors simply aren’t thinking about the campaign yet, it’s clear now that McCain’s fundraising failures lie first and foremost with his campaign.
I’m very curious to find out how much McCain raises and where his campaign’s bogey was set (I’d guess around $30 million). It’s possible that McCain’s staff is spilling the bad news now because they are miles away from the goal. How devastating will it be for McCain’s faltering campaign if he only pulls in $10-15 million while Romney, according to Hotline, is likely to raise $30-35 million.
Technorati Tags: John McCain, Mitt Romney
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