Free Republic

Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul's campaign for president will announce in the coming days that it raised approximately $2.5 million in the third quarter and has $2 million cash on hand, Communications Director Sergio Gor said Thursday. That haul is just a fraction of the $20 million the campaign of retired brain surgeon Ben Carson says it is on track to post for the third quarter -- half of that money coming in in September alone. Paul's third quarter total is well under the $7 million the libertarian firebrand raised in the second quarter. Part of that money was transferred from...

<p>Bundling campaign donations is no longer just for the well-heeled and well-connected.</p> <p>Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign is launching a social crowd-funding platform this week that encourages small donors to set up mini-fundraising operations by dangling video game-style badges and “secret events” as rewards.</p>

“Don’t look back,” Satchel Paige once advised, “something may be gaining on you.” For Hillary Clinton, that something is Bernie Sanders. The FEC filings from both campaigns show that donations to Team Hillary dropped substantially in the third quarter (called the second quarter in relation to campaign filings), allowing Sanders to muscle up to near-parity: As Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders inch closer together in the polls, so it seems do their fundraising numbers.Clinton raised roughly $28 million in the second quarter of her presidential campaign, a Clinton campaign official familiar with Federal Election Commission filings said. This figure,...

The super PAC supporting neurosurgeon Ben Carson for GOP president has seen a surge of donations since his appearance Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” where Mr. Carson said he wouldn’t advocate for a Muslim to be president of the United States. “We sent out an email to Carson supporters, and we’ve never had an email raise so much money so quickly — it’s unbelievable,” said John Philip Sousa IV, who chairs the 2016 Committee super PAC. “My phone has exploded over the last 48 hours — of people wanting me to pass on to Dr. Carson how much they...

PHOENIX — Heidi Cruz, investment banker and political spouse, stood outside a ballroom here, shaking hands and making small talk, working to close her most ambitious deal yet: getting her husband elected president. Cruz, 43, is a potent weapon for the presidential campaign of her husband, Sen. Ted Cruz. He relishes fighting with Democrats and Republicans; she is quick with a hug. He tries to galvanize voters; she spends hours on the phone, trying to persuade them to max out their donations. "Stylistically, I can soften him a little bit," Cruz, clad in navy leggings and black flats, Roberto Cavalli...

There's another sign — if you needed one — that Jeb Bush is sucking wind in the Republican primary: Three top fundraisers from Bush's home base of Florida have left the campaign. The particulars of the split are up for debate, according to Politico's Alex Isenstadt and Marc Caputo, who broke the news. But regardless of the proximate cause, it's a big deal because it suggests two larger issues for Bush's campaign: He's dug a big hole and there's concern in his own camp that he won't be able to dig his way out. It also comes less than three...

After investing a sizable fortune into building a political machine that now rivals the size and budgets of both major political parties, the conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch are seeing some of their top operatives take jobs with the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. The fact that many of Trump’s political positions are at odds with those of the Koch brothers does not seem to be a factor. Take Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager, who spent many years of his career working for the Koch political network, first as an assistant at the Koch-led group Citizens for a...

One of Scott Walker’s top fundraisers met with Donald Trump on Monday and discussed the possibility of leaving the Wisconsin governor’s camp to work for the GOP presidential front-runner’s campaign, the fundraiser and Mr. Trump said. Anthony Scaramucci, a national finance co-chairman for Mr. Walker’s campaign, said in a phone interview that the two discussed the possibility of his defecting to Mr. Trump

Major Democratic fundraisers have been invited to meet with Vice President Joe Biden at his residence at the U.S. Naval Observatory after Labor Day, part of a series of conversations he is having with senior party players as he contemplates jumping into the 2016 race. Among the guests invited to the gathering are top bundlers who raised large sums for the Obama-Biden campaigns in 2008 and 2012, according to people familiar with the outreach. The sitdown is scheduled to take place during the week following Labor Day.

Olive Branch, Mississippi (CNN)—Ted Cruz gushes about his wife, Heidi, on the campaign trail, telling an audience here that she is "beautiful, brilliant and my very best friend in the whole wide world." She's also something else: The best fundraiser in the Republican presidential candidate's corner. The senator's wife, a top executive at Goldman Sachs who is taking a leave to work at campaign headquarters, is effectively leading her husband's fundraising operation, running some weekly finance calls and pushing major donors to give the maximum they're allowed under federal law. It's a far cry from the caricatured profile of the...

Cruz Picking Up Money and Support According to the Dallas Morning News, Ted Cruz isn’t making things any easier for Rick Perry. Cruz has raised close to $900,000 from some of the same donors who donated to Perry’s 2012 campaign. Those same people have only donated a little over $370,000 to Perry this time. Cruz isn’t just raising money though, he is connecting with a lot of potential voters. With $14 million, Cruz’s campaign has raised more than any other Republican–he was the first candidate to officially declare, which gave him a head start on fundraising–and he’s dominated the market...

At a fundraiser to help cover the funeral costs of a friend who died trying to stop a fight outside a Saskatoon bar, a group of young men ended up embroiled in a fight that led to two of them facing assault charges. It was a sad set of circumstances that concluded in Saskatoon provincial court on Thursday, with Christopher Godlien pleading guilty to assault causing bodily harm. The second accused, Robbie Watier, previously pleaded guilty to assault in relation to the same incident. They were at Tequila Nightclub on the night of March 8, 2014, at a fundraiser for...

Ben Nash, chief executive of PCS Wireless, is the man behind a mystery $250,000 donation to a super PAC supporting Sen. Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, according to the New York Times. Nash donated $250,000 to Stand for Principle PAC in January through “V3 231 LLC,” a company registered in New York. Nash donated to Cruz because “he has been a strong supporter of Jewish issues,” company spokesman Robert Barletta told the Times. Nash, a former student of Jewish religious texts at Yeshiva, co-founded PCS Wireless in 2001 as a teenager.The company became a major global distributor of new and used...

Trump says he's prepared to spend $1 billion on campaign By Eugene Scott, CNN Updated 0202 GMT (0902 HKT) August 16, 2015 | Video Source: Des Moines, Iowa (CNN)—Donald Trump said Saturday that he's prepared to spend $1 billion on his campaign if necessary. "It's irrelevant," he said when asked by CNN's Jeremy Diamond outside the Iowa State Fair on how much he has spent so far on his campaign. "I make $400 million a year, so what difference does it make? What I want to do is make the country great." Pressed again later in the afternoon if he...

After Sen. Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) released a video criticizing real-estate magnate Donald Trump for his past allegiances with Democratic candidates, Trump had a familiar response at the ready. "Recently, Rand Paul called me and asked me to play golf," Trump said in a statement. "I easily beat him on the golf course and will even more easily beat him now, in the world in the politics." Then he added: "Senator Paul does not mention that after trouncing him in golf I made a significant donation to the eye center with which he is affiliated." Republican candidates are learning the hard...

The donors who gave to Perry's last presidential run have supplied more money to Cruz's campaign this time around.Rick Perry's campaign is in deep financial trouble. And fellow Texan Ted Cruz is part of the reason why. While Perry's near-broke campaign has stopped paying its staff, Cruz has dominated the chase for Texas dollars—even among the donors who fueled Perry's 2012 presidential campaign. According to a National Journal analysis of campaign-finance records, Perry 2012 donors have given over $895,000 to Cruz so far this year but only $376,000 (less than half) to Perry's 2016 campaign. Perry raised just over $1.1...

Tuesday, Rick Perry's campaign announced it could no longer pay his staffers around the country and released them to find other work. His fundraising had dried up. It's potentially an ignominious end to a noteworthy political career that spanned more than 30 years. Fundraising acumen was considered one of Perry's strong points four years ago when he belatedly announced his run for the White House and raised $17 million in the first seven weeks of his campaign. In 2015, it's a different story. His campaign is on the ropes and out of money. Not even Texas is solidly behind the...

Unlike the last two presidential elections when Barack Obama soaked up most of the local campaign contributions to presidential candidates, donors so far this year are splitting their money among about a half-dozen contenders. And while Hillary Clinton is the runaway leader in Illinois — she's collected $1.76 million statewide out of the $2.73 million going to the 14 presidential candidates who had filed disclosure reports through June — she's not even the leading Democratic recipient in East Central Illinois. In the ZIP codes that begin with the "618" prefix — which include most of Champaign, Vermilion and Piatt counties...

Memphis, Tennessee (CNN)—Ted Cruz said Tuesday that he expects to voluntarily disclose the names of people raising money for his presidential bid, reversing his campaign's previous position. The Texas Republican senator, who boasts in nearly every speech of his campaign's ability to raise cash, told CNN in an interview on his campaign bus that he would release the names of "bundlers" who collect checks from their networks and funnel them to the campaign. "We generally opt toward disclosure," Cruz said when asked why he previously had no plans to release the names. "The names of our bundlers are not terribly...

The Rick Perry campaign took another blow it absolutely did not need. Late Monday, National Journal reported that the former Texas governor's campaign has stopped paying its South Carolina staff. By Monday night, there were reports that all paid Perry staff had been taken off the payroll, and that the campaign's top brass gave staff the green light to apply for other jobs. "Pay is only one reason people do this," Katon Dawson, the governor's South Carolina state director, told the National Journal. He told The Washington Post that "money is extremely tight" and that everyone "moved to volunteer status,"...