Money trouble in Rudy land. His senior staff has taken suspended pay. (Kudos to them for doing it.) The big question now is what’s left in the Giuliani war-chest. Note the following item from the St. Petersburg TImes: “Also Friday, Giuliani campaign manager Michael DuHaime said they began January with more than $7 million on hand for the primary; enough, he said, to carry out their Florida plan.” Look closely at DuHaime’s statement: He claims $7 million plus cash on hand, at the “beginning of January.” But what about the cash-on-hand figure now? With Rudy’s TV ad burn rate in Florida and general campaign expenses, my guess is the actual current, i.e., mid-January, cash on hand is more like $3 million, with operating debts of another $500,000 to $600,000. In other words, Rudy is down to his last $2 to $3 million, and since a campaign’s fundraising income runs about 2 weeks behind the current winner-or-loser buzz on the campaign, I doubt much money is gushing in these days to Rudy HQ. This is a major flaw in the wait-to-win strategy Rudy has embraced. You can’t raise much money when you keep losing early primaries, so you run out of financial fuel before the later primaries you are betting on actually occur. Whoops. Rudy is not alone in the poor house. My guess is that every campaign is under financial pressure. McCain, totally broke a week ago, is probably the one operation seeing a significant increase in fundraising. Huckabee and Thompson are living off respectable Internet revenue, but this is a time that demands high spending, with Michigan and South Carolina and potentially Florida TV bills to pay. Romney is running pretty much on his own resources. (The $5 million dollars the Romney campaign claimed to raise after New Hampshire was mostly general election money.) So can Rudy actually win? Well, first I must applaud his new ad attacking all those gasbag pundits! Enough of them, already. So here is the Rudy scenario: Romney scores an upset in Michigan, and Huckabee (or Fred Thompson) wins narrowly in South Carolina. It’s a battle royal in Florida. Rudy’s south Florida base propels him through the fractured field to a close victory. He then bounces into February 5, winning CA, NY, NJ, IL, CT, and MA; becomes frontrunner; and wins the nomination. I don’t believe it, but that’s the potential road-path. If Rudy can raise the money he’ll need to fund it.
