Mike Huckabee is not a frontrunner:

Mike Huckabee’s presidential effort will report having raised around $1 million in the most recent period. That number is sure to disappoint the political observers who rightly view cash-raised and cash-on-hand numbers as a key indicator of a candidate’s strength.

It’s important to remember that fundraising has never been one of Huckabee’s strengths.

The thought was that Huckabee could take his surprise second-place finish in August’s Iowa straw poll, which he claimed launched his candidacy into the top tier, and raise loads of campaign cash in September. That didn’t happen.

NRO’s Jim Geraghty says the total is “pretty disappointing, considering how he was supposed to catch fire after the second place finish at the Iowa straw poll.”

Unless someone offers him the Veep slot, it looks like that straw poll might turn out to have been the high point of the Huckabee campaign. He seems like the kind of candidate who could be back and stronger in four years — but not if nobody has any faith in his ability to raise money. Really, there’s no excuse — Huckabee has had the benefit of some significant advantages, and he has failed to use them.

Fundraising, Mike Huckabee | 4 Comments »

Here are a few early figures for third quarter fundraising in the GOP field.

Political Wire:

• Sen. John McCain reports $5 million raised — beating expectations — but the campaign is still more than $2 milliion in debt, according to The Politico. [...]
• Craig Crawford on Fred Thompson: “It looks like Republican White House hopeful Fred Thompson could flub yet another campaign test this week — at least in the eyes of the national media and other Beltway junkies. Word is that the former Tennessee senator, who is getting tepid reviews for his stump performances, will post unimpressive results for his first official fundraising quarter, just ended.”

More from Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic.

Mitt Romney is likely to wind up having raised the most money this quarter… somewhere north of $10M…maybe around $12M. Rudy Giuliani raised less than that. Fred Thompson raised more than $8. John McCain, north of $5.

Compare that with their Democratic rivals. Senator Barack Obama’s (D-Illinois) campaign put their figures at “at least $20 million” this quarter. Former Senator John Edwards (D-North Carolina) raked in $7 million while New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson netted $5 million.

Updated 10/01/07 at 5:45pm: Ron Paul surpassed Q2 numbers with a strong online push in the waning days of the quarter.

Paul campaign officials set an ambitious goal on Monday, September 24th to raise an additional $500,000 on-line in the final week of the third quarter. The effort brought in $200,000 on Tuesday alone and by Wednesday, having met its initial goal, the campaign raised the bar to $1,000,000. On Saturday night, the campaign passed the million dollar mark after just six days, and finished over $1,200,000 on-line in one week.

Fundraising | 68 Comments »

As the third quarter winds down and the FEC reporting deadline looms, here’s what to expect from the top candidates.

Giuliani advisers won’t provide an estimate of their expected haul — they are very good at keeping their estimates in house — but they probably will not raise as much as they did last quarter. Through June 30, Giuliani had raised nearly $35M and had $16M left to spend, a burn rate of about 45%.

Romney has loaned himself nearly $9M, which, when subtracted from his $12M cash-on-hand, would suggest that receipts in have not kept pace with disbursements, generally, which have totaled more than $32M. Romney donors said that they had been told that Romney was prepared to spend another $5M to keep his campaign’s budget intact. They give a range of $10M to $12M for individual contributions in the third quarter.

John McCain will raise between $4 and $5M; Fred Thompson will probably raise around $6M.

Quick thoughts here. One, Romney is spending untold amounts of money. He’s had to, in order to raise his name ID against well-known challengers. So he has to raise lots more than every other candidate to keep financial parity. This is not happening.

Two, nobody’s raising as much as last quarter, and still not nearly as much as the Democrats.

Three, McCain and particularly Thompson’s numbers are pathetic. Thompson just started raising money, meaning that he just started hitting up his biggest supporters for maxed-out donations. And all he could scrounge up was a measly $6M? I suppose on a two-day-a-week work schedule, that’s decent enough, but for someone who actually wants to be President…

There’s a decent amount of bad news for all of these candidates here. And considering their continued disrespect of minority voters, as well as the difficulties succeeded an historically unpopular President, the pump is primed for….

A new savior!!!!

Newt Gingrich is poised to enter the presidential contest on Monday with an interesting device: A self-made draft site.

The site will ask people to pledge money for his campaign if he were to run, and will lay out his ideas for the country.

It’s like the Night of 100 Stars, if by “stars” you mean “cranky Republicans seeing their grip on power slip away.”

Fred Thompson, Fundraising, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani | 1 Comment »

Rudy Giuliani canned his finance chief today. Does this mean we should expect less-than-stellar, by GOP 2008 measures, fundraising figures for this quarter?

In a sign of potential money woes, Rudy Giuliani has fired his presidential campaign’s chief fundraiser and brought in a top rainmaker for President Bush, The Daily News has learned.

Anne Dunsmore, who took control of Giuliani’s day-to-day fundraising operation in May, has been replaced by Jim Lee, a Texas money man and Bush ally who is already one of Giuliani’s national finance co-chairs.

Earlier this week, “rogue” supporters held fundraisers suggesting $9.11 per donation, a reference to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks; an event exploited without end that it is the entire basis of the Giuliani campaign. (When people say “9/11 changed everything,” Rudy Giuliani is dead-set on proving it.)

If Giuliani’s numbers are low, he will have wished they suggested $254 donations instead.

Fundraising, Rudy Giuliani | 7 Comments »

The Giuliani campaign has mnade it very clear that they have no relationship with the supporters who are throwing a fundraiser and asking for contributions of $9.11. But it’s not difficult to determine how these supporters came up with the idea. Their candidate is someone who relates 9/11 to absolutely every issue imaginable, who uses the imagery in every speech, who indeed has made it the centerpiece of his campaign. Why would these moral lepers think there would be a problem with raising money off the backs of the dead at Ground Zero, too?

Somehow, an advertisement in a paper is beyond the pale, but using the anniversary of an American tragedy to fundraise doesn’t cause anyone to bat an eyelash. The Giuliani team could do more than say they had nothing to do with the event; they could refuse the money. And they could stop making the surfeit of inferences that result in such behavior.

Advisors, Fundraising, Rudy Giuliani | 6 Comments »

Seizing on an opportunity to help fuel the “McCain resurgence” stories, the Arizona senator’s campaign is talking up their newfound financial stability. The organization isn’t the Cadillac McCain had once hoped for, but it looks like at the very least he’s able to make his payments on a more economical model:

“We’ve gotten rid of a bunch of debt, and we’ve had very good cash flow for July and August,” said Rick Davis, who made finances a priority upon taking over as McCain’s national campaign manager. [...]

McCain characterized his receipts for August, a traditionally slow fundraising month, as “OK.” It was more than the campaign spent, he said, but not enough to support major media buys.

It’s a small victory for McCain, a man who once looked like the runaway favorite for the Republican nomination. But at this point he’ll take any good news he can get.

Fundraising, John McCain | No Comments »

A couple weeks back, liberal blogger Lane Hudson filed an FEC complaint against Fred Thompson, who was violating the “testing the waters” portion of the law. Today, the Thompson campaign returned campaign money that would have only been eligible for the general election. He was collecting primary and general election money before even announcing as a candidate. This is clearly an effort to curry favor with an FEC whose statutes he has violated.

And none of this would have happened IMO if someone didn’t stand up and call Thompson on his lawbreaking. Thanks, Lane.

Fred Thompson, Fundraising | 1 Comment »

After the Straw Poll, Huckabee and Brownback have both significantly downsized their Iowa campaigns despite their top three finishes.

For Huckabee, who got the second-place spot in Ames, the downsizing is temporary:

Rather than kicking his Iowa campaign up a notch, second-place Ames Straw Poll finisher Gov. Mike Huckabee of Arkansas downsized his Iowa operation to just three paid staffers in the wake of his low-budget achievement.

“Right now were back down to three. We had, gosh 16 or 18 here for the Straw Poll,” Huckabee Iowa campaign manager Eric Woolson told the Iowa Indepenent. “Those folks have kind of scattered to the four winds.”

Woolson, who also serves as the Iowa campaign’s communications director and press secretary, said the lean campaign had imported much of the rest of its pre-Ames staff from other Huckabee offices around the nation in the weeks leading up to the Straw Poll. “We had four folks out from New Hampshire, we probably had 8 or 10 people from Little Rock, so we probably had closer to 20. This pace was packed!” he said, gesturing around the campaign’s small downtown Des Moines headquarters, which has plate-glass windows that overlook a busy street and advertise the candidate to passersby. “Some full-time volunteers came in from a couple of different states, so we were really packed for the Straw Poll.”

“Obviously, we’ll ramp back up for caucus time,” he continued.

For Brownback, who is actually closing one of his two Iowa offices, it could not be determined whether the downsizing would be temporary or a sign of worse things to come for his campaign:

Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback’s campaign shut down his second Iowa office, opened in Ames on June 21, after a third-place finish in the Ames Straw Poll earlier this month.

The campaign continues to operate out of its lone Iowa office in West Des Moines.

Iowa campaign spokesman John Rankin was unavailable for comment; a receptionist said he was “on vacation” but still responding to e-mail.

Contacted a second time by Iowa Independent, she clarified that Rankin was simply “out of town…not on vacation,” and remained reachable by e-mail.

After that story ran, Brownback’s communications director got in touch with Iowa Independent to clarify that closing their Ames office was part of their plan all along.

Perhaps neither campaign has received the post-Straw Poll bump in fund raising that the media predicted.

Cross-posted at Chase Martyn On Display.

Fundraising, Iowa, Mike Huckabee, Sam Brownback | No Comments »

Huckabee and Brownback are making headlines today for their poor fundraising, generating almost identical ledes: they are “way behind” but confident of their prospects in the Iowa straw poll nonetheless. This piece on Huckabee goes into more detail, quoting Marc Ambinder, among others:

“The guy doesn’t seem to like fundraising, and if he doesn’t like it, he’s not going to do it,” Ambinder said. “Money is one way to measure support, and if he’s not raising money, then his support, obviously, is not high.”

Still, says Iowa Republican Jim Black, there’s a window of opportunity for Huckabee in Ames, given the absence of Giuliani and McCain and the general GOP “malaise.” Don’t count the guy out, but even a strong finish in the straw poll won’t do much for him if he’s not able to follow it up with a very strong fundraising effort — and we haven’t seen much evidence that he’s capable of that.

Fred Thompson, Fundraising, Mike Huckabee | 1 Comment »

As we discussed a couple weeks ago, Fred Thompson has been pushing the boundaries of FEC law, claiming to be “testing the waters” but not campaigning — which frees him to avoid filing an FEC disclosure. As The Hill reported, Thompson’s activities have looked a lot like a campaign, which would mean he’s breaking the law by not filing. Now Adam Bonin of Daily Kos has a good in-depth look at the story, including a number of damning statements from Thompson’s own mouth. This isn’t going away.

Fred Thompson, Fundraising | 1 Comment »