What’s it take to run for president? Raise $8 per second

The amount of campaign cash it takes to run for president in 2015 just became so obscenely large that it’s becoming impossible to fathom.

How much? How about raising $8.25 per second? (More on that later.)

The second quarter fundraising reports unveiled by the presidential candidates and their Super-PACs this week, when dissected, reveal some amazing numbers. Especially the money figures reported by Jeb Bush.

For example, the former Florida governor, while competing with 15 other candidates for cash, raised $11.4 million. But he also has quietly enjoyed the fundraising bonanza accomplished by his Super-PAC, Right to Rise USA. The PAC has raised $103 million and has $98 million in reserve – “cash on hand.”
In comparison, at this stage of the last presidential election cycle, Rick Santorum’s campaign had less than $250,000 in cash on hand in July 2011. And he went on to win the Iowa caucuses some six months later.

Of course, in 2015 Hillary Clinton is universally recognized as the fundraising juggernaut, raising $45 million in the second quarter of 2015 alone as she shamelessly taps wealthy donors while simultaneously denouncing the Citizens United court ruling that made this all possible.

But The Washington Post points out that Bush, in an apples-to-apples comparison, is actually outpacing Clinton.

At the Post’s “The Fix” blog, here’s the explanation:

“… It's important to note that Bush announced his candidacy late in the (second quarter) cycle. Given that he only announced halfway through June and the cycle ended at the end of the month, he had 16 days in which to pull that $11.4 million together -- compared to Clinton, who launched her campaign in April and had almost the whole quarter.
“By the ‘how much was raised per day’ standard, then, Bush did far better -- exceeding even the energetic per-day fundraising of Hillary Clinton.”

While Bush garnered more than $700,000 a day, Clinton trailed with a little less than $600,000 daily.

“In the abstract, $712,500 per day sounds like a lot, because it is,” wrote Philip Bump of The Fix. “But that figure can also be broken down further. For example, that's $8.25 per second. Jeb Bush raised enough money to buy two Starbucks lattes every second for the last half of June 2015.”

The Fix also discerned another astounding method of measuring the stratospheric campaign cash hauls that Super-PACs can accomplish.

In this era of million dollar donations, Bush’s PAC has established a new standard for defining small donors. While their total is in the nine figures, the PAC team points out that of their 9,900 contributors, some 9,400 fit in the small donor category by giving $25,000 or less.
In comparison, when President Obama’s re-election team was raking in dollars at an unprecedented rate in 2012, they staked their claim to grassroots support by using $250 as their measuring stick for a small donation (though not necessarily a one-time donor).  

The Fix notes that the new standard for a small PAC donor is roughly equivalent to what a family of four living at the poverty line earns in an entire year.

You may also want to check out the terrific GIF that The Fix created to demonstrate what it actually means to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars per day.