Vito Fossella's vulnerabilities: fund raising

I have broken down Vito Fossella's contributions, expenditures and cash on hand per quarter since 2002 to get an idea of how things are shaping up for his campaign this cycle. First contributions per quarter;



His campaign previously claimed;

“The committee raises between $1.2 and $1.8 million every election cycle and we are on track to reach our goals this cycle as well,” said Kaye.

I already covered why this is not truthful with $1.5 million being the most he raised outside of his '97 special election. The fun part though now is that with just two and a half quarters left to raise money Fossella will need to pull in $150,000 per quarter just to reach $1.2 million. Fossella barely pulled this in in the last quarter. Looking back at election years he hasn't passed $200,000 in a quarter in the past two cycles (during election years) so it seems likely that he will fall short of $1.3 million on a very optimistic and favorable extrapolation. In 2006 his numbers actually went down during the 2 and 3 quarters leading up to the election. This will get much more interesting when we look at expenditures.

The next trend to notice is off election year (odd years) totals. Fossella managed to bring in significantly more money in 2005 than he has been able to do in 2007. His fund raising is on the decline, on top of the debt that strapped his campaign for the past six quarters.

While Fossella's campaign will try to spin their fund raising and set false expectations all you have to do it take a look at the real numbers and see there a lot of signs that his contributions are heading in the wrong direction.

Next: Expenditures