Now that John McCain’s disappointing numbers are out, there are still a couple more interesting questions remaining:
- Mitt Romney versus Rudy Giuliani:
- What does it mean if Rudy raises more money than he did in Q1, but Romney raises less? That seems to be the conventional wisdom.
- If Romney has a McCainiac burn-rate, that would leave Rudy with substantially more CoH. After all, Romney raised (and gave to self) $8m more than Rudy in Q1, but they ended up with the same CoH.
- Fred Thompson may not be required to release any numbers because is "testing the waters". Presumably he will if it looks impressive.
- Rest of the field. The rest of the field will actually compete in the Ames Straw Poll. So their numbers will be really important to determine CoH for Ames. Probably only the top one or two Ames performers, except Romney, will even bother competing in the Iowa caucus. But some specific questions remain:
- Sam Brownback was the top of the 2nd-tier in Q1 fundraising. Will he stay that way?
- Mike Huckabee has been the clear winner of the debates. Can he convert it to real cash. His $400k Q1 haul was very disappointing.
- Ron Paul’s energy could be converted to some level of money. He could be an interesting dynamic a bunch of ways.
A lot of interesting questions remain left in the money chase.
