Campaign Giving Down In Texas For 2nd Quarter

The campaign donation numbers are in for the second quarter of 2007. Here in Texas, those numbers have gone down for all but three candidates. During the first quarter, Texas gave $8.4 million to the presidential candidates combined. In the second quarter, the donations fell to $6.3 million.

During the first quarter, the candidates were actually coming to Texas to tap what has traditionally been a very generous state. But a couple of months ago, our state legislature refused to move our primary up to February as many other states did, including some large and rich states. Since that time, candidate sightings in the state are becoming pretty rare.

Since the candidates are focusing their attention on the early primary states and not visiting Texas much, Texans have toned down their giving. But there were three candidates that bucked the trend of less giving here in Texas -- Republican Ron Paul and Democrats Barack Obama and Bill Richardson.

My favorite candidate, Bill Richardson, collected $394,696 in the first quarter. In the second quarter, he collected more totalling $560,234 (about 47% more). With any luck, Texas will give him even more in the third quarter. He's looking more and more like a viable candidate since hitting double digits in both Iowa and New Hampshire polls.

Barack Obama raised his contributions from $699,370 to $717,669, and Ron Paul raised his from $62,777 to $272,892. Paul got a definite bump from his performance in the early debates.

Nationally, campaign giving is still on a record-setting pace. Together, the candidates have raised over $265 million and it's still six months until the caucus' and primaries begin. Here's how the candidates are doing. Democrats are in blue and Republicans in red. The figures are in millions of dollars.

CANDIDATE......... 2nd Q......... TOTAL

Clinton..................27.0.............63.0

Obama...................33.1.............58.9

Romney.................20.9............44.4

Giuliani.................17.6.............35.6

McCain..................11.5.............25.3

Edwards................9.1..............23.1

Richardson...........7.0..............13.3

Dodd.....................3.2..............12.0

Biden....................2.4..............6.4

Brownback...........1.4...............3.3

Paul......................2.3...............3.0

Tancredo..............1.4...............2.8

Hunter.................0.8...............1.3

Huckabee.............0.7...............1.3

Kucinich..............0.7...............1.1

Thompson...........0.4...............0.8

Gravel..................0.1...............0.2