Faltering Rand Paul campaign gets another blow

Paul’s $2.5 million haul represents a decline from the $6.9 million he raised over the first three months of his campaign.

“In the last go around, President Obama won the youth vote 3-to-1”, Paul said Wednesday during an interview with the Washington Examiner.

If Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has his way, this will be the last week for a while when he can say he’s still running for president and see that statement reported as news.

But the Paul campaign insists its financials are healthy and on an upward trajectory and that the Kentucky senator is “in it for the long haul”. “Part of that money was transferred from his Senate committee, a practice allowed under campaign finance laws”, Gor said.

Rand Paul was likely thankful for the concept of rounding this week when CNBC released the criteria it will use to determine the candidates who will participate in its October 28 debate among leading Republican candidates for president.

University of Kentucky political science professor Stephen Voss said money might not be the only reason Paul’s back home.

Paul has also recently been raising money for his U.S. Senate re-election, raising questions about his commitment to the presidential contest.

Nevertheless, Paul seemed at ease when addressing his fundraising figures and bottom-tier position in the polls.

Ron Paul raised almost $35 million during his presidential run four years ago. “Between visits to early primary states with crowds in the hundreds, a strong debate performance, new polling which indicates a clear uptick, we are pleased to have raised approximately $2.5 million”, Paul’s communications director, Sergio Gor, said in an email. One of the three Super PACs backing Paul, PurplePAC, announced earlier this week that it would halt fundraising efforts indefinitely, citing a belief that Paul had moved too far away from the libertarian-focused message that first caught their attention.

With $2 million cash on hand, “we’re not going anywhere”, Gor said. So far, though, the results in terms of fundraising have been disappointing.

One bright spot for the 2016 Paul presidential campaign is that a third super-PAC, Concerned American Voters, is footing the bill for a staff of field canvassers on the job in Iowa. “Donors who have given to us were generally pretty energized by the performance in last debate”, says the PAC’s senior adviser, Matt Kibbe, who noted that Trump has taken up a lot of the oxygen but that there is still time for Paul to turn things around. “I’ve talked about the hypocrisy of Jeb going to an elite Northeastern school and smoking pot, but then not really recognizing himself that the poor kid on the South Side of Chicago has a much higher chance of getting caught smoking pot”. “They want to hear those libertarian values to distinguish Rand”. The final decision won’t be made until after October 21. The average online contribution was about $30, and 99 percent of his donations were $100 or less, according to his campaign.

The low numbers come on the heels of other bad fundraising news for Paul. Still, a few argue, there’s a Senate race in Kentucky that may look to be more and more inviting.