According to this link Fred has much more campaign money than Huckabee:
http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/index.asp
Maybe Politico really is just spinning a fable.
Details details...
One interesting note is Fred’s cash on hand vs debt compared to Mitt’s...
Of course we will be told about the fact that Mitt is self funding...
That table is 2 months old. Thompson had a fund raising windfall immediately post announcement. His staff’s quotes and the behavior of the campaign since show profoundly that the windfall rate of donations did not maintain.
Here is the critical data everyone needs to get their brains wrapped around. THIS is what it costs to run a campaign.
http://www.ksg.harvard.edu/case/3pt/berkovitz.html
and this data is quite a number of years old. But even so if you sit down and project a 30 second spot every 30 minutes (heavy would be every 15 minutes) on multiple target TV audiences the costs soar. Then tack on radio on multiple stations and you’re burning easily $400K/week in just a medium market.
You can then add senior staff salaries to these numbers. They vary by credentials, but pretty much all are well north of six figures annually at that level of play. Then there are the pollsters. Travel expense. Hotel conference room reservations.
Read that media buy table and . . . understand.