Herman Cain's campaign manager Mark Block isn't the only thing that's smoking
Maggie Haberman:
Earlier reports quoted Herman Cain's campaign saying he'd raised $3 million in the month of October. But Robert Costa has the campaign saying that number is actually $5 million.
Cain spokesman JD Gordon hasn't answered my email about what amounts to a rather large difference in campaign fundraising, which won't be verifiable until January either way.
According to Costa's report, most of the money is coming in online:
The campaign has averaged $1.2 million per week since October 1, and over 80 percent of the $5 million raised has come in the form of online donations.
If those numbers are real and Cain manages to sustain them through the quarter, then he's on pace to raise as much as Mitt Romney and Rick Perry did last quarter—and he's doing it through a channel that should give him a big advantage over Perry and Romney, assuming he knows what he's doing. If Cain is able to build a donor database, it'll be the gift that keeps on giving: online donors typically don't max out, so you can go back to them to ask for additional donations.
Romney and Perry, meanwhile, rely heavily on big donations, and once a donor has maxed out, they've reached the limit of what they can give (except when they find a new relative to through whom to launder money).
So if this report is accurate, and Cain has any clue about how to handle the flood of new supporters, his campaign is in the process of getting the staying power he needs to be a serious contender. For some perspective (again assuming this report is accurate), with two months left in the year, Cain has already raised more than $10 million. In the 2008 campaign, Mike Huckabee raised about $9.5 million through the end of 2007. So Cain has apparently already surpassed Huckabee's total, and at the pace he's reportedly on, he'll end up doubling Huckabee's first year take.
In other words, even though Herman Cain might actually be a clown, as a candidate for President, a lot of Republicans seem to believe he's the real deal.