Postcards from the Bleeding Edge
Monday, November 05, 2007
Ron Paul on course for 2m+ today
With a half day total in excess of 1.5 million dollars - well beyond of what Ron Paul has done in his best week prior, donors per hour appears to have peaked. Odds are the total won't crack 2.4m unless the evening news picks up the story. Still, a very impressive showing.Update: At roughly 1:30PM Ron Paul cracked 2m for the day and donors per hour has not fallen off very much from its peak earlier in the morning. A 3m dollar day is looking possible, which would be truly historic.
Some are cheerleading on for the best single day fundraising total in history, but that appears unlikely. Example #1: John Kerry got 3m in one day, in June 2004 - admittedly much later in his campaign than Ron Paul is now. So I went looking for who got the most early money, ever, and it looks to be Mitt Romney.
A few days after Mitt Romney left office to campaign full time for the presidency, his campaign raised 6.5m in a single day, although it is very unclear if that was actual cash raised or merely pledges, and what proportion of the funds came from whom. (I am still digging for the facts here - can anyone figure out his actual donations from his own money and the hype?)
Update: According to an alert sent out a few minutes ago by the Ron Paul campaign, Romney took in 3.1m in cash donations on Jan 8th, 2008. I'm assuming we're both talking about the same fundraiser....
What's interesting to me is how much that fundraiser of Romney's must have cost. $300,000 was one estimate, but I think that's low. He used sales software ("ComMitt") specifically developed for the campaign. He rented out 30000+ sq feet of space, built "pods" and an enormous set of big screen displays, bussed in 400 supporters, supplied them with laptops, and then turned them loose on their Christmas card lists. All just a few days after leaving office.
I keep wondering what Paul could do if the campaign started using old fashioned flashy car salesman methods like that? It wouldn't feel right, though.
I'd be surprised if this whole November 5th thing cost the campaign more than 20k - Ron Paul and his supporters know how to stretch a dollar.
Labels: election 2008, fundraising, Mitt Romney, msm, Ron Paul
¶ 8:08 AM 4 comments
