Fans of Ron Paul are trying to raise $10 million for their candidate today alone, WSJ’s Susan Davis reports.
If all goes as planned, the Ron Paul presidential campaign could raise $10 million today. At least that’s what his supporters are working toward.
A grassroots effort run by supporter Trevor Lyman through the site http://www.thisnovember5th.com was initially asking for 100,000 people to sign up and pledge to give $100 today, for a total that could make cash-strapped Republican Sen. John McCain blush. As of Saturday, however, the site had only registered about 18,000 supporters for the “moneybomb” — far short of the total but enough to create a notable and growing boost to Paul’s campaign chest.
Paul tracks his donations in real time on his web site. The clock started ticking at midnight when current donations were listed at $2,773,017.02. At the time of this posting — eight hours into the 24 hour effort — he had raised more than $1 million for a total of $3,805,615. In the time it took to write this post, he raised more than $30,000. The campaign has set a $12 million fundraising goal for the fourth quarter, which ends Dec. 31.
As of 2:48 Eastern, Paul had raised a total of $5,188,149.57 (for freedom), or $2,415,132.55 since midnight. On the one hand, this means that he’s likely to fall far short of the $10 million goal. On the other, that’s still an impressive amount of cash.
I love the ticker idea and, even moreso, the listing of the name of the most recent contributor. Talk about your transparency!
UPDATE: Commenter Christopher raises an interesting question: “Are they raising the money in gold, or worthless paper money?”
UPDATE: They’re over $7.2 million as of 6:42 am and fundraising director Jonathan Bydlak says they raised “Over $3,800,000” from “More than 35,000 total donations” yesterday. Well short of $10 million but “The most successful fundraising day ever is John Kerry’s $5.7 million. And that was on the day he accepted the Democratic nomination.”
