About 21,000 people had contributed to Paul by 4 p.m, today (Monday), the campaign said.
by Mark Memmott and Jill Lawrence
Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian Republican presidential candidate from Texas, says today that he’s broken a record: the record for online fundraising in a single day during the pre-convention primary process.
According to Paul’s campaign, he raised more than $2.7 million online in 16 hours that ended at 4 p.m. ET. The campaign called that “the largest single-day online primary fundraising effort by a presidential candidate in United States election history.”
Paul is an outspoken opponent of abortion and the war in Iraq, and wants to abolish the Internal Revenue Service. He’s become something of an Internet phenomenon and raised $5 million overall in the third quarter this year. The campaign aims to raise $12 million in the quarter ending Dec. 31.
The Paul campaign cited two earlier benchmarks in staking its claim today. Democrat John Kerry, his party’s nominee in 2004, raised $2.7 million online two days after the Super Tuesday primaries that year. Four years earlier, Republican John McCain collected more than $1 million online in the two days after he won the New Hampshire primary.
About 21,000 people had contributed to Paul by 4 p.m, today, the campaign said.
Update at 6 p.m. ET: Who’s giving?
Paul spokesman Jesse Benton says contributors to the campaign are diverse. That could be an understatement. Among those he says are part of the “Ron Paul coalition”:
• The “Old Right,” people he describes as Robert Taft and Barry Goldwater Republicans.
• Gun-rights supporters (he calls Paul “probably the strongest supporter of Second Amendment rights in the Congress”).
• Progressives who want to end the Iraq war and are “sick of what they’re getting from the Democrats.”
• Social conservatives who oppose abortion.