MANCHESTER, N.H. — Jim Gilmore in late 2015 loaned more than $80,000 of his personal wealth to his ultra-long-shot presidential race, including $32,000 on the last day of the year.
Throughout 2015, his campaign dipped into his personal funds for $124,075 in loans, according to FEC filings.
Candidates seeding their campaign through personal loans is not rare, but putting $80,000 of his own money into a campaign that doesn’t even register in many polls (and while he doesn’t even make the junior varsity debate most of the time) so late in the game is eye-catching.
On Dec. 31, five weeks before the New Hampshire primary, did Gilmore really believe he had a chance?
If not, how does he expect to pay back this money?
At the end of the year, his campaign’s cash on hand was $33,657.52, meaning he was down to his final $1,657.52 before the personal loan.
Gilmore For America will somehow need to raise the $124,075 (plus whatever he may have loaned his campaign in January) or the former Gov. will simply have burned that money on this campaign. A 1-percent candidate may have trouble raising that much.
A call to the Gilmore campaign went unreturned.
Timothy P. Carney, the Washington Examiner’s senior political columnist, can be contacted at [email protected]. His column appears Tuesday and Thursday nights on washingtonexaminer.com.
