GOP Fundraising Numbers Should Raise Some Eyebrows
[Posted by WLS]
Reporting on recent GOP fundraising and campaign spending numbers are all out as of midnight tonight. Some reporting from earlier today on GOP numbers should raise some eyebrows among the various supports of various GOP candidates.
First, lets simply do away with the obligatory “the Dems are outraising the Reps”. Fine. It is what it is. Anyone who thinks the GOP nominee won’t have plenty of money for the general election is an idiot.
Now, let’s look at the reported income, spending, and cash-on-hand of the major candidates as of the end of the third quarter as best I can decipher it from this report:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071015/ap_po/campaign_fundraising_18
Romney:
Raised: 18.3 million
Spent: 21 million
Cash on Hand: 9.2 million
Giuliani:
Raised: 11.5 million
Spent: 13 million
Cash on Hand: 16.6 million
McCain:
Raised: 9.3 million
Spent: 6 million
Cash on Hand: 3.6 million
Thompson:
Raised: 12.8 million (over 4 months, not 3 as with others)
Spent: 5.4 million (August and Sept. only)
Cash on Hand: $6.5 million
I can’t verify that all these numbers are perfectly accurate, though I did try to compare them to the most recent FEC filings. Most of the numbers match up, so I think they are pretty close.
One number that is not obvious is that Romney’s current quarter fundraising was ballooned by another substantial loan to his campaign — $8.5 million. Without that loan, his fundraising from the public was only $9.8 million.
That would have put him a significant amount behind Rudy and Thompson — though Thompson’s number is inflated by the fact that it includes all his fundraising since it is his first filing, and that includes fundraising done in June when he was only “exploring” a run.
At $9.8 million, Romney basically ran even in the money race with a badly wounded McCain, who had to work hard to hold down expenses in order to bring his cash-on-hand balance back up after a disastrous second quarter.
So, while Romney was raising $9.8 million from other people’s checkbooks while spending $21 million, McCain was raising $9.3 million from other people’s checkbooks while spending only 6 million.
The polls are closing in on Romney in NH, and I suspect that if there is one place that Huckabee and Thompson are going to make a dent in Romney early it would be in Iowa.
The guy who comes out smelling like a rose from these reports is Rudy. He’s raising money faster than Romney, he’s spending less, he has more cash-on-hand — if you exclude Romney’s personal checkbook — he’s continuing to hold onto a lead in the national polls as the campaign enters the fall, he’s made it a dead heat in NH after trailing badly early, and he continues to lead in South Carolina.
Romney is not wearing well on the GOP primary voters. His numbers have not appreciably improved outside of Iowa and NH where he has spent a boatload of money. He was the early candidate of the conservative establishment — at least as that establishment is represented over at NRO. Now he’s spending money more than twice as fast as he’s raising it.
While its nice to have his personal wealth as a safety net, the real truth is that fundraising from the public is a reflection of support among those committed enough to contribute. Romney hasn’t generated the support among contributors that one would have expected after the money he has poured into early advertising.
I don’t see how it gets better for him going forward.
*** Note: This is not a Ron Paul thread. From the looks of the input so far, there isn’t too much interest in debating the financing numbers and their implications. That being said, I’m not going to let this become a Ron Paul post in the Comments. I will be deleting comments that don’t focus on the post.
WLS.
I hate to bang the crazy-Ron-Paul drum, but how is it that that article totally omits any mention of the good doctor, who has by some estimates, $8 to $9 mil in the bank? If the article only talked about the top four plus Huckabee, I could understand…but it then mentions the just as longshot and wacko Brownback, who has not even $100K in the bank. Ron Paul may be a viable third party candidate (as far as a vote getter, not a winner), and for GOPers to ignore that possibility seems particularly naive to me.
Zach (8e0e3b) — 10/15/2007 @ 7:35 pmI think the reason Ron Paul has been left out of many GOP conversations (at least by conservatives like me) is that he’s not a conservative nor does he claim to be. Paul is a libertarian who would make a far better 3rd party candidate. The fact that he hasn’t chosen to run as a 3rd party candidate is good for the GOP but it doesn’t make his overall views any more palatable to the rank-and-file.
WLS,
Good post. I agree about Romney. I don’t think he has a chance for the nomination or even for a VP slot. In fact, as strange as it may sound, I think he’s a front-runner with money who will end up being a spoiler.
DRJ (67ced6) — 10/15/2007 @ 8:38 pmCrazy Ron won’t vote for the Republican candidate for Prez – that rules him out as a Republican for me. “For me, it’s all or nuthin'” is a great line from “Oklahoma!”, but it’s not going to fly for Republicans, who expect at a minimum that their party candidates will pledge to support the party in the general election.
steve miller (2b7187) — 10/15/2007 @ 9:40 pmReally? Not even if Huckabee or someone more conservative than Giuliani wins it?
Zach (8e0e3b) — 10/15/2007 @ 10:01 pmI think that if Guiliani pulls off the nomination he will pull many, many moderates of both parties to his side. For moderate dems he will be seen as a very viable alternative to Hillary.
Voice of Reason (10af7e) — 10/16/2007 @ 8:58 amThompson or Romney, not nearly as many.
DRJ
Ron Paul is a Constitutionalist and a conservative. I don’t know what you define as a conservative, but the Conservative Leadership Conference overwhelmingly voted for Ron Paul in its recent straw poll.
Moreover, though he ran on the Libertarian ticket in 1988, he is most certainly not an orthodox libertarian because of his support for U.S. sovereignty and his stand against illegal immigration. Orthodox Libertarians argue that property rights and rights of contract trump the right of the government to limit immigration. I believe that he ran on their ticket because of his profound disappointment in the fact that Reagan, whose campaign Ron Paul headed up in Texas in 1976, did not do what he promised to do with regard to limiting the size of government.
If you believe that Bush is a conservative and Ron Paul is not, then it is my opinion that we have a different definition of the term, conservative.
Jerri Lynn Ward (86312b) — 10/16/2007 @ 9:50 amJerri Lynn,
It’s certainly true that Bush rarely acts like a conservative!
DRJ (67ced6) — 10/16/2007 @ 11:17 amBrief summary Ron Paul’s platforms:
Much lower taxes;
Foreign policy emphasis on security, non-intervention and free trade;
Constitutional originalist;
Eliminate government as many entitlements and government subsidies as possible
Anti-gun-control
Roe v. Wade misinterpreted the constitution;
Smaller government;
Major emphasis on local government;
But he’s not conservative. OK . . .
Granted he might not line up with what Republicans became once they got power (which isn’t conservative at all).
But the fact that some Republicans say Ron Paul isn’t a conservative shows how little Republicans really care about conservative values anymore.
As John Cole aptly put it:
“Seriously — what does the current Republican party stand for? Permanent war, fear, the nanny state, big spending, torture, execution on demand, complete paranoia regarding the media, control over your body, denial of evolution and outright rejection of science . . . all the while demanding that in order to be a good American I have to spend most of every damned day condemning half my fellow Americans as terrorist appeasers.”
Phil (6d9f2f) — 10/16/2007 @ 11:52 amPhil – Quoting John Cole on conservatism is laughable.
JD (a481bb) — 10/16/2007 @ 12:30 pmI think a more telling number is the number of donors. Thompson had over 80,000. Romney had few.
I don’t think just giving ad money to the media is going to make it happen this time, things have drastically changed in the structure of politics. The media is mostly watched by people who have already made up their minds, radio is going to be far more effective than people think.
bill-tb (26027c) — 10/16/2007 @ 12:48 pmJD, I wasn’t quoting Cole on conservatism. I was quoting him on Republicans.
Phil (6d9f2f) — 10/16/2007 @ 1:07 pmI stand corrected, Phil, and as such, I will rephrase.
Phil, Quoting John Cole on Republicans is laughable. It is like quoting Oliver Willis on Slim Fast.
JD (a481bb) — 10/16/2007 @ 3:42 pmYeah, and if Oliver Willis said that Slim Fast tastes like crap and leaves you feeling hungry, his opinion would be relevant.
And if Slim Fast decided not to listen to Oliver Willis’ criticism because he’s not, well, slim, I’d say they were making the same mistake you’re making in discounting criticism of the Republicans by someone just because they find the Republican party unappealing.
Phil (aa9cba) — 10/16/2007 @ 7:17 pmOh, and FYI: Ron Paul is about to hit $1 million in new online donations since the first of October. That’s the first two weeks of this quarter, in online donations alone.
I’d be curious to know how that stacks up to the other Republicans in the same period. Of course, they don’t report their donation receipts in real time like Dr. Paul does:
http://www.ronpaul2008.com/
Phil (aa9cba) — 10/16/2007 @ 7:20 pmOliver Willis – Malcolm XXXXL
daleyrocks (906622) — 10/16/2007 @ 7:53 pm