Financial Profile Friday: Ron Paul

Last week, I reviewed John Edwards’ campaign finances. This week, we’re switching political parties to take a look at Ron Paul’s fundraising and campaign spending.

2008 isn’t Ron Paul’s first run for the presidency. He ran as the Libertarian candidate — while managing to remain a registered Republican — in 1988. This time around, though, the Texas congressman is doing better. In this race, Paul has rapidly become known for his Internet support and online fundraising techniques.

Paul set a new fundraising milestone on December 16, 2007, raking in over $6 million in one day. That number, and date, does make it hard to accurately determine just how much of a budget Paul has at this point. Fourth quarter FEC filings are not yet available for 2007, leaving us to rely on information released in September, 2007.

As of last September, Paul had raised $8.2 million and spent $2.8 million. At that point, he trailed most of the GOP candidates significantly, with the exception of John McCain. It is reasonable to expect that the fourth quarter reports will still show relatively low fundraising on the part of Paul, but the margin between him and other candidates should have narrowed significantly.

Paul has received a high number of donations from the computer and internet sectors, with Google donating a bit over $20,000 to the campaign. Apple has tossed around $5,000 into the pot, and Cisco and Verizon are also counted among Paul’s contributors. (Just a reminder: when we say that a certain company has donated to a campaign, we’re actually stating that money was donated from any of the following sources: a company’s PAC, employees of the company, or owners of the company.)

According to the September filings, Paul has spent about $123,000 on internet media. This number might seem low, especially considering all of his online successes, but, remember that he’s been able to leverage a lot of grassroots support — the sort of support that he doesn’t need to spend money advertising to. The bulk of his expenditures have actually gone to other advertising methods, with over $600,000 spent on materials (printing costs, mostly) and another $200,000 on broadcast media.