Newt Gingrich Raises $2 Million, Has $1 Million In Debt

Not surprisingly, Newt Gingrich’s finance report is mostly bad news for him:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich will report raising approximately $2 million in the second fundraising quarter of the year and ending the month of June with $225,000 in the bank, POLITICO has learned.

But in a steep obstacle to Gingrich’s comeback hopes, his campaign remains about a million dollars in debt. It will be a struggle for Gingrich to put his balance sheet in the black and fund the kind of operation traditionally required to compete in Iowa, where he has indicated he’ll attempt to turn his campaign around.

Gingrich supporters acknowledge that his debt represents a serious financial challenge, though they note that the Republican has paid down about 10 percent of $1.2 million in invoices since June 9, when most of his senior political staff resigned.

Gingrich himself has been up front about his financial problems, saying during a Monday visit to Clear Lake, Iowa: “The fact is a month of media barrage is painful, and it slowed a lot of things down … Candidly, the consultants left us in debt. But every single week since they left we’ve been cutting down the debt, and we raise more than we spend in a week.”

R.C. Hammond, the press secretary for Gingrich’s presidential campaign, shed new light on the arc of Gingrich’s financial woes, explaining that the presidential candidate only learned of the severity of his debt when a new campaign director reviewed the books after last month’s staff shakeup.

Since then, the campaign has been regrouping: Gingrich has taken cost-saving steps, such as flying commercial, and has focused on recruiting political professionals willing to volunteer their time to his effort.

At this point, it’s clear that Gingrich will stay in this race long enough to sell a few books, boost his speaking fees, a little, and maybe buy Calista some more jewelry.

 

FILED UNDER: 2012 Election, US Politics, , ,
Doug Mataconis
About Doug Mataconis
Doug Mataconis held a B.A. in Political Science from Rutgers University and J.D. from George Mason University School of Law. He joined the staff of OTB in May 2010 and contributed a staggering 16,483 posts before his retirement in January 2020. He passed far too young in July 2021.

Comments

  1. Brian says:

    Cynical much?

    Wait, it’s Newt, strike that.

    Cynical not enough?

  2. Franklin says:

    I haven’t been paying any attention, but it appears that somebody wildly overestimated his popularity.

  3. gVOR08 says:

    Didn’t read the post. Won’t. Why are you wasting bandwidth on this nobody loser Gingrich?