Giuliani Time is now on your own dime.

About a dozen senior campaign staffers for Rudy Giuliani are foregoing their January paychecks, aides said Friday, a sign of possible money trouble for the Republican presidential candidate.

“We have enough money, but we could always use more money,” contended Mike DuHaime, Giuliani’s campaign manager and one of those who now is working for free. “We want to make sure we have enough to win.”

At the end of December, he said the campaign had $11.5 million cash on hand, $7 million of which can be used for the primary. He disputed the notion of a cash-strapped campaign, and said Giuliani continues to bring in cash; several fundraisers are scheduled this week in Florida.

DuHaime and other aides stressed that relinquishing pay was voluntary and was limited to senior staffers.

What’s incredible is that every Republican campaign has now shown money troubles except for Ron Paul. Freddie Thompson was begging for donors to fill up his red pickup truck, McCain’s in debt, Huckabee couldn’t raise anything until Iowa, and Romney has pulled all his ads to double down in Michigan.

The more these guys campaign, the less anyone wants to give them money.

Fundraising, Rudy Giuliani | 2 Comments »

Despite claiming on Sunday that he “will win” New Hampshire primary, it looks like Senator John McCain’s campaign war chest is a little light and he needs money.

Campaign officials confirmed a report that McCain may borrow money to finance television ads, mailings and other expenses in those states and in South Carolina. The Associated Press reported that the line of credit would be $3 million.

For McCain, taking a loan would be another admission that his campaign is in desperate straits. Once considered the Republican front-runner with seemingly unlimited resources, his campaign faltered over the summer after failing to raise as much money as his rivals.

Michael D. Shear cautions against counting out McCain’s campaign, citing the Democratic primary in 2004:

But taking a loan does not necessarily mean a win is completely out of reach. In 2004, Democrat John F. Kerry took a similar late-season loan, secured against his personal house, and used the money to secure his nomination.

However, Political Machine’s Dave discounts this comparison:

The important difference is that John Kerry was the fall back candidate so when the Howard Dean campaign collapsed, John Kerry was still there to fall back to. If Rudy collapses in January, John McCain is not the fall back candidate, in fact there are three fall back candidates before we even get to McCain: Romney, Huckabee, Thompson.

The McCain Campaign Death Watch continues. In recent weeks, there was continuous talk of McCain as the comeback kid, a narrative the media just loves to ride, but it is hard to surge if you don’t have any money.

Fundraising, John McCain | 1 Comment »

Let me engage with Paul’s post about Ron Paul’s fundraising day yesterday, which netted $4.2 million. When I said that his campaign is not “some wacko fringe campaign,” I wasn’t talking in the sense of the ideas Paul is putting forward, particularly the ones where he seeks to abolish every federal agency. It’s not a fringe campaign in the sense that it is better-funded and better-organized, at least online, than practically anything on the Republican side. Now, I do think that Paul’s online presence is magnified by two factors: 1) there are a lot more libertarians online than there are in the general population, 2) either the campaign or supporters of it are using illegal spambots to push out email messages. However, the fact that This November 5th, with almost no media attention outside of Paul blogs and forums, became the most successful online fundraiser in history, cannot be denied or dismissed.

There are a variety of reasons for this. The Paul campaign openly embraced a supporter-driven “flashmob fundraising” tactic, and encouraged a close relationship with its own grassroots like nobody else in the Presidential field. Whether that can translate into votes remains to be seen, but it absolutely is a brilliant model for any campaign that’s unafraid of “losing message discipline” and interested in empowering supporters.

There are certain things that mass emails do well. Something like this isn’t one of them. Things like this require a zeal and an intensity and an iterativeness that can only be found in trace amounts in any campaign-sponsored venue. Campaign emails can be successful if the response rate is tiny. Obama could send an email announcing his own fundraising day; a certain percentage will pledge, and a certain percentage of those will follow through. Because email is an inherently transactional medium, the numbers aren’t likely to be as high relative to the size of the campaign.

By doing this out in the wild you can communicate an offbeat idea like this better, and flesh it out more. You can find concentrations of intent where a willingness to donate is astronomical — and create enough energy to suck more mass into that energized core.

The second, and perhaps more important, explanation is that Paul filled a need in the Republican electorate, not only of opposition to the Iraq war, but of principled opinions, even if they may be vehemently opposed by large portions of the rank and file. In an age of Bush and the pretenders to the GOP throne, Paul has conviction and integrity. There is a generation of paleoconservatives who haven’t seen such an unconventional candidate who preferred to state his core beliefs - however distasteful some may find them - in some time. I would guess that accounts for his appeal online. And in so doing, it is in many ways a mirror image of Howard Dean’s unconventional 2004 campaign. He isn’t about to send me changing my registration, but I understand why others have flocked to the campaign, even if it relies a bit much on the “Great Man” theory of politics for my taste.

Paul shouldn’t be dismissed, but LEARNED from, as a model for how 21st-century campaign can leverage the Internet, not just as an ATM machine but as a partner.

Fundraising, Ron Paul | 2 Comments »

I disagree with David — I think that Ron Paul is a wacko fringe candidate. There are lots of people who are against the war, without also wanting to abolish the Department of Education or withdraw from the United Nations or go back on the gold standard. I deeply dislike the notion that opposing the war — a majority position — is something that should be associated with the radicalism, the outsiderism, of a figure like Guy Fawkes.

But that said, there’s no doubt that Paul has struck a nerve. His one-day Guy Fawkes-themed fundraiser wound up pulling in $4.07 million in the end. I would caution Rep. Paul’s supporters not to confuse the support he has received thanks to his vehement opposition to the war with broad support for his nutty paranoid-”libertarian” ideas generally (and no doubt some of those supporters will stop by to berate me for using the n-word there). “First they laugh at you,” etc — I know. He’s not going to win.

But hey, it was a good day for you guys.

Fundraising, Ron Paul | 1 Comment »

Ron Paul’s campaign held a “moneybomb” event today. He’s reporting raising $2.2 million dollars. (UPDATE: It’s apparently up to $3 million now)

Vanity campaigns on the order of Rep. Paul’s are supposed to be able to sustain themselves because they’re relatively cheap, driven by free media like debates, and without the resources to compete in a traditional way. Paul is running that type of campaign but actually getting more than enough money to make a real go at victory. I don’t see how he gets that done unless every paleoconservative in the country floods the polls, but consider that even in the true-blue areas of California that I inhabit, I see plenty of Ron Paul stickers. In this state, where the Republican primary is segmented by district, with 3 delegates up for grabs in each one, Paul is running in blue areas like San Francisco, where there are less Republicans to target. And in New Hampshire, as I’ve been noting, he’s tailor-made for the primary.

Nobody in EITHER party has approached raising two million online in a day (that’s more than McCain or Huckabee currently have in the bank, I think). This is not some wacko fringe campaign.

Fundraising, Ron Paul | 4 Comments »

Meanwhile, Mike Huckabee continues to build strength, relatively speaking. Yesterday was the NYC marathon, so I’ll use a marathon metaphor: since his Iowa straw poll victory, the Huckster has gone from a five-hour pace to a three-hour pace — but that doesn’t put him anywhere near the elite runners.

The former Arkansas governor is cultivating the evangelical vote, one congregation at a time. USA Today catches up with him in Texas, where he’s doing the church circuit and raising money:

Huckabee’s campaign said its online fundraising for October topped $1 million and exceeded by $1 his entire take for July through September. He picked up $100,000 on Saturday at an event in DeSoto, south of Dallas.[…]

David Redlawsk, co-director of the Hawkeye Poll, said candidates don’t have to be “incredibly rich” to succeed in Iowa, but they need to have a staff to “get people out to caucuses.” The Des Moines Register reported Romney has a paid staff of 67 in Iowa, compared with eight for Huckabee. But Redlawsk added that Huckabee does have something his Republican opponents don’t: “a strong base of evangelical Christians.”

Evangelicals do have money — there’s an entire array of businesses devoted just to chasing their dollars — but the real GOP money elite continues to oppose Huckabee. The Club for Growth, for instance, is still pounding him:

The Club for Growth, a Washington group that campaigns against tax increases, produced a list of levies put in place while Huckabee was governor, including taxes for sales, fuel, beer and cigarettes. “This is all about a ploy for the vice presidency,” said Pat Toomey, the club’s president. “He knows he can’t run with the big dogs here.”

Toomey’s wrong about a lot of things, but he’s probably right about Huckabee: this is an excellent campaign for the vice-presidential nomination.

Fundraising, Mike Huckabee | No Comments »

The Romney campaign waited until the end of the day yesterday to release their Q3 fundraising numbers. The big story is that he’s outspending his GOP rivals, “sinking a total of $21 million into his campaign, compared with Giuliani’s $13.3 million in expenses and newcomer Fred Thompson’s $5.7 million.” Rudy’s own burn rate went over 100% during the last quarter, but as a DNC email pointed out, having raised $9.8 million, Romney’s burn rate would have been 214%, were it not for the $8.5 million he personally loaned to his own campaign fund (aka the “nightmare” scenario).

The email also observed that Romney only raised about $8,000 from employees of Bain Capital, the private equity firm he founded — suggesting that that much-discussed source of contributions may be drying up.

Fundraising, Mitt Romney | 1 Comment »

Republican activists launched their response to the Democratic fundraising web tool, ActBlue, on Monday. David All wrote on the day of its launch, “There’s a people-powered movement energizing the Slatecard Revolution and we’re proud to be a part of it.”

So how did Slatecard do on its first day? Let’s just say that the “revolution” started with a fizzle rather than a bang. Check out the numbers: (more…)

Fundraising | 2 Comments »

Himself.

Mitt Romney’s campaign is announcing today his total raised for this quarter: $18 million. But the campaign also says that $8.5 million of this came out of Romney’s own pockets — so his actual tally raised is closer to $10 million.

As the great TBogg notes, this really is like someone sending themselves flowers at work to prove to everyone in the office how desirable they are. Romney’s personal contributions to his campaign now exceed $15 million dollars, which is also the amount of money John McCain sees skipping over to him dressed in a slinky outfit in a nightly dream.

With all of this money and 10,000 ads already aired in the early states, you’d think Romney would be far further along than he is. But people are still seeing the badly programmed robot behind the money. And the flip-flopping charges aren’t going away, like in this brilliantly-produced ad from (oddly enough) the Log Cabin Republicans.

The Romney campaign dismissed the ad as coming from Rudy. It’s undeniably devastating no matter who the progenitor. Looks like Daddy Warbucks will have to write himself another check to combat it!

Fundraising, Mitt Romney | 2 Comments »

Ron Paul equaled John McCain’s take for the third quarter in fundraising. Yet one is seen as the “comeback kid,” the other as an unimportant fringe candidate. Someone want to explain that one?

It’s also very evident that the qualities Ron Paul exhibits in 2008 are of a piece with the ones that led McCain to victory in New Hampshire in 2000. Not to put too fine a point on it, but there’s clearly only one maverick in the Republican field, one guy who is running against the accepted wisdom of the party. He represents an extreme strain of libertarianism and isolationism that the GOP has completely abandoned. That may not play with a base that still largely accepts George W. Bush as a decent President, but in an anti-tax Northeast state in a Republican primary? Paul could honestly win it if Romney continues his free fall. What we know is that he’ll have the money to compete.

Updated 10/03/07 at 1:06pm by Matt Ortega: Eric Kleefield nails it with this salient point from Ron Paul’s fundraising figures.

It does make one wonder how unhappy a lot of Republican voters must be, if a man running on a form of conservatism that is completely antithetical to the modern GOP can end up raising as much cash as somebody who was once thought of as unbeatable.

Fundraising, Ron Paul, John McCain | 1 Comment »