Newt Gingrich Loses His Sugar Daddy

Newt Gingrich may soon find it very hard to compete against Mitt Romney, or even Rick Santorum, now that the man who was funding his SuperPAC with multimillion dollar donations has decided it’s time to close the checkbook:

Newt Gingrich was just days away from the Jan. 31 Florida Republican presidential primary when he told reporters that his campaign was down to its last $600,000.

Five losing contests later, Gingrich and Winning Our Future, an outside political action committee supporting him, are almost silent on television airwaves, offering free water and coffee at events, and revamping a fundraising strategy based largely on the support of a single wealthy backer, Sheldon Adelson, and the Las Vegas casino owner’s family.

In the past seven days, Winning Our Future has spent $61,290 on broadcast television advertisements, compared with $636,920 spent by Mitt Romney and a super-PAC backing him, Restore Our Future, according to data compiled by New York-based Kantar Media’s CMAG, a company that tracks advertising.

For now, the Adelsons don’t plan to deliver another big check to float Gingrich’s campaign, according to a person familiar with their deliberations. The family has donated a combined $11 million to Gingrich’s super-PAC in the past two months, according to interviews and Federal Election Commission records. An Adelson spokesman declined to comment.

Winning The Future now say that it is going to concentrate on smaller donors, but that kind of fundraising isn’t necessarily going to help in the big media, multi-state contests to come. Combined with the fundraising problems that the Gingrich campaign itself seems to be having, there’s no way that this can be considered good news for Gingrich.

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. mantis says:

    The family has donated a combined $11 million to Gingrich’s super-PAC in the past two months, according to interviews and Federal Election Commission records.

    Must be nice to be able to dump $11 million down a big, fat hole and not even notice. If only political “speech” were as “free” for all of us.

  2. grumpy realist says:

    Snerk,, snerk, snerk.

    Just as a lot of women have discovered, the problem about being dependent upon Big Daddy is that he can close up the checkbook and vanish away if you’re not doing what he wants….

    Gingrich probably won’t care, however. I never saw this as being any more to him than a way to fluff up the potential audience for books/tapes/lectures. So now rather than ‘ex-Speaker driven out by scandal” he gets to slap on the suitcases: “Great visionary whose run for presidency was cruelly stabbed in the back by unwillingness of supporters to pony up the $$ because they were too timid and unappreciative of his great genius.”

  3. gVOR08 says:

    So Adelson saw the handwriting on the wall. Or maybe he audited Gingrich’s books. Anybody know where his money is going now? Or is he pulling out?

  4. Neil Hudelson says:

    I wonder if Gingrich is breathing a sigh of relief, now that he can finally close down his grand charade?

  5. An Interested Party says:

    If Newt were as intellgent as he seems to think he is, he would realize that Santorum has bumped him aside as the new flavor of the month…if anyone should step in to fill the role of the Adelsons it should be rich Democrats, as the longer Newt hangs around, the more it hurts the GOP…

  6. mantis says:

    @An Interested Party:

    Heh. Soros for Newt!

  7. telecat says:

    Sucks to be Newt. It might have helped if he wasn’t a complete asshole but he is, so there ya go.

    Get ready for four more years of BFO.

  8. MarkedMan says:

    I wonder if Newt is putting even a penny of his own money into his campaign?

  9. albatross says:

    Democrats AND Republicans are abusing SuperPACs.

    Imagine a SuperPAC serenading its special candidate with a rock ‘n’ roll song like this:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1HAzTQqefA&feature=youtu.be

  10. Kelsonus says: