Dem
51
GOP
49
Many of the people running for president in 2024 had fundraising hauls that were somewhere between "not bad" and "pretty good." And then there is former vice president Mike Pence, whose campaign reported just $3.3 million in donations. It's also down to about $1 million cash on hand, with about $650,000 in debt. That means that Pence 2024 is only about $350,000 above water, and it would be even worse than that if Pence hadn't written the campaign a check for $150,000. It's also possible that some meaningful chunk of his money-on-hand came from max donors who gave $6,600. If so, then $3,300/donor can't be used for the primaries.
In short, Pence doesn't have the money to run even a shoestring campaign. The cash-saving triage has already begun; this weekend, Pence announced that he would not compete in the Nevada caucus, and instead would enter the state's primary. The good news about the primary is that it doesn't demand a seven-figure investment in ground game. The bad news is that it's purely symbolic, as the state's Republican delegates will be awarded to the caucus winner.
Pence has not yet qualified for the next Republican debate; he's got the polls, but not the correct number of donors. That can probably be overcome, even if the former VP doesn't have the scratch to hand out $20 gift cards to people who donate a buck. However, if the RNC continues with the same general approach, he's likely to have big trouble with both the correct number of donors and with the correct polling results for debate #4. The criteria haven't been announced, but they will likely be something like 100,000 unique donors, and 6% in half a dozen polls. Pence is having trouble getting to 70,000 donors, much less 100,000, and he's generally polling at about 4%.
As you might guess, we're thinking he'll hold on until he fails to make a debate stage, and then he'll have to bow to reality. Debate #3 is on November 8, while debate #4 hasn't been announced yet, but will probably be in mid-December. So, the Republican field might well be Pence-less by Christmas. (Z)