Rand Paul raises $2.5M in 3rd quarter

But in the next quarter of that campaign, Ron Paul raised $8 million.

“We’ve to got to be a party not of just the Second Amendment, but also the Sixth Amendment – saying that we are the party of justice and everybody gets their day in court and everybody has a right to a trial before a jury”, he said. He now stands at roughly 3 percent in the latest RealClearPolitics polling average of Republican voters, far behind fellow Republican hopefuls Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, who serve alongside Paul in the Senate. The campaign insists there will be no shakeups or changes in strategy, that Paul will continue his campaign schedule in the early states and regions off the beaten track, and that it has enough resources to carry the candidate through at least the first four primaries.

Candidates who can’t clear that threshold will be relegated to the undercard debate-bad news for Paul, who has garnered around one or two percent in national surveys.

And in a bit of irony, the failure of two pro-Paul super PACs has prevented the fate that befell Walker and former Texas governor Rick Perry – campaigns counting on the outside groups to carry it if the cash ran out. Republican Ben Carson on Wednesday said his campaign had raised $20 million, while Jeb Bush’s campaign disclosed only that it had exceeded its second-quarter haul of $11.4 million.

The rise of real political outsiders, Donald Trump in particular, undercut Paul’s credentials.

“The [National Security Agency] overreach and government overreach gives us a unique opportunity to be one of the leaders in opposing that program and actually getting things to go our way”, Paul said when asked what messages he’s using to cultivate support among young Americans.

“You can’t just come out of Iowa or New Hampshire with a tail wind behind you”, he said. Ron Paul’s 2008 and 2012 bids became fundraising phenomenons, but its restive libertarian base was full of complaints about the money being wasted. “Rand Paul on the main stage”, campaign spokesman Sergio Gor said confidently in an email response to requests for comment on CNBC’s criteria. “I have stopped raising money for him until I see the campaign correct its problems”, Crane told POLITICO. “They were pleased with how Rand listened”.

At the moment, reaching the general election is looking like an increasingly remote possibility for Paul and his supporters. He attributes his low poll numbers, he said, to “a celebrity skewing”.

“What I’m hearing from investors and activists is they want to hear more of what they heard in the last debate”, Kibbe says.

Despite the glimmers of hope, one adviser to the campaign who spoke on condition of anonymity said “I think there’s already been a few cutting back”, and that “the campaign headquarters used to be jammed with people coming and going and now it’s quite thinned out”.

“No we haven’t cut people from headquarters”, Biundo said. “I don’t know that they were all on payroll, all of these people”.