The Romney Campaign's Cash Problems

Romney could always loan his own campaign money (which Hillary had do for her campaign in '08), though this year there are "Super PACs" to help pick up the slack in terms of media buys. The Romney campaign proper has quite the "burn rate."

Huffington Post, 02-21-12:

If January's trend lines held through February, Mitt Romney's presidential campaign ran out of money two days ago.

The former Massachusetts governor announced Monday night that he had raised roughly $6.4 million in January. More significantly, however, he reported having only $7.7 million cash on hand -- which means that over the course of 31 days, his campaign spent approximately $18.7 million.

First Read, 03-07-12:

[Campaign advertising spending by state:]

Alabama: Restore Our Future (pro-Romney $840,000), Winning Our Future (pro-Gingrich) $290,000
Hawaii: Paul $39,000
Illinois: Restore Our Future $660,000, Gingrich $16,000
Kansas: Winning Our Future $144,000
Louisiana: Restore Our Future $460,000, Winning Our Future $3,000, Gingrich $1,000
Mississippi: Restore Our Future $750,000, Winning Our Future $240,000, Santorum $4,000

[...]

Notice that the pro-Romney Super PAC -- but NOT the Romney campaign -- is advertising in these states. It's yet another sign that the Romney campaign doesn't have much money left (the FEC report on March 20 will be interesting to see).

Romney, as do all of the candidates, fits in fundraising events practically everywhere he goes. The problem for Romney is that he seems to have mostly tapped out his big-money donors for the primary season (the individual maximum is $2,500). Check out the chart (red = $2,500 donors):


Does anybody want to bet that the Romney campaign's March 20th FEC report will show that Mitt Romney loaned his campaign some money? At the moment, I'd say that it's even odds.