Fundraising reports reshuffle race for GOP nomination

Many have predicted that the 2016 race for president would be the year of the super-PAC. The thinking goes: Candidates don’t need money — they need a sugar daddy to fund a super-PAC.

Not so fast, my friend.

{mosads}Already two formidable and impressive Republican candidates, former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, have bowed out of the presidential race due to slow campaign fundraising. Perry raised under $300,000 in the third quarter and Walker has $1 million in debt. Both possessed super-PACs that were flush with millions in cash.

Why does hard money fundraising matter?

Because there are certain things that only a campaign can do.

The campaign owns the candidate’s time and movements. The campaign has sole responsibility for ballot access and debates. The campaign has headquarters staff, field staff and large expenditures on data, digital and polling.

These costs matter.

Many candidates are running lean operations in the 2016 race, and that’s smart given the large field and the uncertainty of the race.

But lean campaigns often cannot scale up quickly enough when their moment comes, a problem we have seen for the Donald Trump (R), Carly Fiorina (R) and Ben Carson (R) campaigns in particular.

Now that the third quarter fundraising reports have been made public, we know a few things to be true about other Republican candidates:

1. Remarkably, Sen. Ted Cruz’s (Texas) campaign has the most cash on hand: $13.5 million.

2. Sen. Marco Rubio’s (Fla.) campaign has slightly more cash on hand than former Gov. Jeb Bush’s (Fla.), although general elections funds may account for that difference.

3. Sen. Rand Paul’s (Ky.) campaign has spent 94 percent of the money it has raised for this race, and has $2.1 million cash on hand because it transferred 75 percent of that amount from his Senate campaign. He is financially running on fumes.

4. Cruz and Rubio are both running the most efficient campaigns with the lowest burn-rates among the top tier candidates. Fiorina is also running a very efficient campaign.

5. The campaigns of Govs. John Kasich (Ohio) and Chris Christie (N.J.) raised similar amounts and have similar cash on hand and will be in a steel-cage death match in New Hampshire.

6. The cash on hand numbers show a marginal difference, with Bush having $10.3 million, Rubio $11 million, Carson $11.5 million and Cruz $13.5 million. One of these four individuals, plus Trump, is most likely to be the ultimate nominee.

7. Carson’s $20 million haul is impressive, but he is spending a huge amount of money to raise those funds. And he is now inexplicably taking two weeks off from the campaign trail to promote his new book.

My takeaway is this: Cruz and Rubio had the most impressive reports, even though Cruz doubled Rubio’s overall third-quarter haul. They both have low burn-rates and strong cash on hand, signaling that they will have staying power. Cruz has the advantage of having more individual donors (he doubled the number of individual donors in the third quarter), which likely indicates that he will have a strong fourth quarter.

Fundraising matters: Strong fundraising starts a virtuous cycle. Weak fundraising leads to a vicious cycle.

Just ask Scott Walker and Rick Perry.

Mackowiak is syndicated columnist; an Austin, Texas-based Republican consultant; and former Capitol Hill and George W. Bush administration aide.