The Gaggle : My Tepid Fund-Raising Would Bother Me, If I Were Actually a Candidate. But Hey, Testing the Waters is Cheap!

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Holly Bailey
Richard Wolffe

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My Tepid Fund-Raising Would Bother Me, If I Were Actually a Candidate. But Hey, Testing the Waters is Cheap!

Holly Bailey

Remember all that talk earlier this summer about Fred Thompson raising $5 million in a month? Well, yeah, that didn't happen. Everyone's favorite noncandidate presidential candidate released his first fund-raising numbers today, disclosing that he raised a little less than $3.5 million between June 4 and June 30. Friends of Fred Thompson, the former senator's "testing the waters" committee, listed about $626,000 in expenses, more than a quarter of that going toward Web and media consulting. The report, filed with the Internal Revenue Service (not the Federal Election Commission because Thompson is not officially in the race yet), says the noncampaign campaign spent about $70,000 on salaries, including a single $13,770 payout to Tom Collamore, who resigned as Thompson's campaign manager last week. The most interesting thing about the report: How not very interesting it is. The list of contributors disclosed by the campaign includes the occasional bold-face name, like former senator Howard Baker, Thompson's close friend and mentor, and Doug Feith, the former Bush administration official who helped plan the Iraq War. (Both men contributed the maximum $2,300.) But your Gaggler's cursory search through an Excel document of 2,356 contributors of $250 or more finds no donations from any of Hollywood Fred's celebrity friends--the exception being Indianapolis Colts quarterback Peyton Manning, who contributed $2,300. Where's Bruce Willis? "Law & Order" creator Dick Wolf gave $2,300, but where's the rest of the cast? Lorre Morgan and Hank Williams Jr. were too busy? (A Nashville fund-raiser, held in mid-June, seems to have attracted only music executives.) Even many of his Washington pals who have been talking up the campaign didn't write checks, including Bill Frist and Mary Matalin. (Frist's son, however, gave $2,300.) In a release, the campaign notes "the millions raised in one month" were done so without direct mail or telephone solicitation, and Fred's first big Washington fund-raiser was held only yesterday, so maybe we'll see more enthusiasm among donors in coming reports. But Thompson now increasingly faces the same specter that has haunted his friend John McCain--the perception that enthusiasm for his presidential bid is dropping by the day. For any candidate, that's bad news--but for Thompson, it's especially bad. After all, he's not even in the race yet, at least not officially.

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