His impressive third-quarter fundraising total supplied some good news following a bad week for the governor
It's been a bleak week for former GOP front-runner Rick Perry.
The Texas governor dropped from first place in the 2012 Republican presidential primary, a position he had held since entering the race in August, with his supporters evidently fleeing for former Godfather's Pizza CEO Herman Cain.
It got worse, and worse, and worse for Perry. After he had led by seven percentage points in the last major poll, a Fox poll last Wednesday tallied Mitt Romney as leading by four percent, then yesterday a Washington Post/ABC poll ranked Perry in a tie for second with Herman Cain, while a Quinnipiac poll showed Perry in third place, behind Romney and Cain both, eight percent behind the resurgent former Massachusetts governor.
Today the Perry campaign leaked a bit of good news, taking some of the focus away from its apparent free-fall: The governor raised $17 million in the third quarter of 2011, lasting from July 1 through Sept. 30.
It's an impressive total, given that Perry only announced his entry on Aug. 13. In just a month and a half of official candidacy, he raised more than any other candidate over the three-month period, approaching Mitt Romney's second-quarter total of $18.25 million and beating Romney's estimated third-quarter total of between $13 million and $14 million.