Rand Paul raises $2.5 million for presidential campaign

Paul’s campaign is expected to report a second quarter fundraising total of about $2.5 million on or before October. 15 when the Federal Election Commission requires candidates and PACs to submit their total contributions.

A modest haul for Paul. “Rand Paul on the main stage”, campaign spokesman Sergio Gor said confidently in an email response to requests for comment on CNBC’s criteria. “Since the last debate we’ve raised $750,000”.

Despite the latest figures showing a decline in financial support since the last FEC deadline – Paul raised $7 million in the previous quarter – a spokesman for Paul says the senator is as determined as ever.

Whether Paul’s campaign is bringing in enough money to stay the distance is an open question, but Gor is adamant that his candidate would not go the way of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, who dropped out of the race last month.

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.

Gor emphasized that the new Paul campaign was on an “upward trend”, especially since the second presidential debate. Paul ranked fifth in fund-raising among the Republican candidates for the previous quarter, when his campaign committee and three allied Super PACs raised a combined $13 million. The campaign has $2 million cash on hand, having already spent $250,000 to help the Republican Party of Kentucky pay for a presidential caucus. 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.