According to numbers released today by the Herman Cain campaign, Cain has raised $9 million so far this quarter, with $2.25 million of it coming in the past ten days. On their own, those numbers might not seem fishy (at least not at first glance), but on Oct. 28, the campaign announced it had raised $5 million so far in the month. By the Cain campaign's own accounting, that leaves $1.75 million that must have come in on Oct. 29 and 30.
There's no way to verify their numbers until Jan. 15, and given their track record so far in the campaign, it'd be a mistake to assume they are telling the truth. It's certainly possible that the numbers they've released are in fact accurate, but Cain's
campaign calendar does not list any fundraisers on Oct. 29 or 30 that would explain such a huge spike, nor did I find any evidence of a money bomb effort on those dates.
Besides that strange two-day spike, there's another thing that makes these numbers fishy. The goal of Cain's announcement today was to show that he has momentum, but if you do the math on his claim from today (and ignore the one from Oct. 28), he actually claimed that the sexual harassment allegation story has had no impact at all on his fundraising pace. Here's what his release claimed:
The Herman Cain Campaign reports receiving over $9 million of financial support from Cain backers since October 1st. Twenty-five percent of these newly received contributions have come in the last ten days.
It sounds impressive that 25 percent of his donations have come in the past ten days, but there have been forty full days since Oct. 1. Ten divided by forty is 25 percent, meaning Cain's claim is that he's been perfectly flat since Politico's original report.
That strikes me as hard to believe—I could see his numbers going up or going down ... but no change at all seems highly improbable. Of course, just because it seems improbable doesn't mean it's impossible.
If the numbers are accurate, it's a big deal, and Cain is on pace to raise over $20 million, but I'm not going to give him the benefit of the doubt just because he said so. We'll know the truth soon enough—the Q4 filing deadline is Jan. 15.