Rand Paul Money Raise Only $7 Million

Rand Paul raised $7 million in the last Federal Election Commission fundraising quarter, reports Breitbart.

This has to be an extremely disappointing raise for Rand, given he had his father's lists to prospect, which provided him with a big jump over other candidates.

Ben Carson, new to the political game, out raised Rand with a haul of $10.5 million from 210,000 contributions.

Rand only received contributions from 108,205 individual donors.

Ted Cruz raised double what Rand did. He has announced a  raise of more than $14 million.

CNN puts into perspective why the money raise numbers are important:

On the stump, insurgent candidates like Cruz are eagerly pointing to their fund-raising prowess to show they are just as viable as those in the establishment.

Rand's affiliated Super PAC, with money raise giant Jesse Benton in charge of scooping up the cash, has not yet released its money raise numbers.

-RW

UPDATE

The Rand money raise may be even worse than one might think at first glance. A person familiar with political money raising reporting points out that the leaked Rand numbers "includes receipts through the joint fundraising committee."  This means it includes money raised by Rand for his Senate campaign, not his presidential bid. "Don't trust these leaks, wait for the actual FEC numbers," says the observer. "These leaked numbers can be played with in many ways. The only thing you can no for sure is that Rand's raise puts near the bottom of the pack."