Republican presidential candidates have weighed in with their latest fund-raising results, according to the Associated Press. The momentum appears to be with Rudy Giuliani (R-NY). He picked up 11M in Q3, taking his total fundraising up to 44M, plus he leads his competitors with 16M cash on hand. Mitt Romney (R-MA) is in the same ballpark, with 10M raised Q3 to an even higher total of 45M, although only 9M is still in the bank. Fred Thompson (R-TN) picked up 7M Q3 to 12.7M with 7M in the bank, and the surprising Ron Paul (R-TX) gained 5M Q3, more than doubling his total take to 8M with 5.3M still on hand. John McCain (R-AZ) refused to acknowledge reports that his campaign was on life support and picked up 6M Q3, bringing the total take to 30.9M, although most of this money is gone — he has only 3.6M in the bank.
Giuliani and Romney would have come in a distant 3rd and 4th on a list comparing Q3 results for all candidates. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) pulled in 27M and Barack Obama pulled in at least 20M.
RBR observation: No one is conceding anything in the Democratic race, and it’s even more wide open here. It will be interesting to see how the candidates’ strategies play out in the heavily front-loaded primary schedule. But one thing is for sure — it won’t do anybody any good to have cash on hand after being soundly squashed on Super Duper Tuesday 2/5/08. Look for most of this cash to be spent by then, particularly that held by the lower-tier candidates.
