20 candidates for president have been collecting funds, and their collective total has now grown to 416.1M. The bulk of the cash has been going to Democrats, who enjoy a 241.0M to 175.1M advantage. Eight Democrats and 12 Republicans are on the Federal Election Commission report. However, two of the Republicans, Tommy Thompson (R-WI) and Jim Gilmore (R-VA) have formally exited the race, and one newcomer, Fred Thompson (R-TN) has been added to the list.
Hillary Clinton (D-NY) leads all comers and had the best quarter, bringing in 26.5M to Barack Obama’s (D-IL) 20.8M in receipts. No other Democrats were able to add cash at a double-digit pace.
On the Republican side, Mitt Romney (R-MA) has amassed the most cash and picked up 18.1M during Q3, but he also chipped in nearly 9M out of his own pocket, more by far than the other 19 candidates combined — only six have donated to themselves, and the only significant amount is the 935K John Cox (R-IL) has used to seed his own longshot campaign. Rudy Giuliani (R-NY) added 11.3M to his coffers and Fred Thompson (R-TN) went from zero to 12.7M during the quarter.
The fastest pace has been set by Ron Paul (R-TX), whose outsider Libertarian stances have generated a lot of internet buzz along with a healthy dose of free media coverage. But even though he doubled his take and then some, he is still far down the list with only 8.2M in total receipts so far.
