Ron Paul may be a bit of a wacko, but he’s got some dedicated supporters. In a move reminiscent of Howard Dean’s online baseball bat, the Paul campaign raised more than $4.3 million online yesterday in a 24 hour period. This sets the record for most amount raised online in a day, and came close to the $5.7 million raised by John Kerry on the day he accepted the nomination in 2004. Wow.
“Damn. Wow. Um, that’s pretty awesome,” said a stunned Jerome Armstrong who served as Howard Dean’s online strategist. Armstrong, the founder of the popular blog MyDD, said Dean raised as much as $700,000 in one day toward the end of the primary race. “But not a million,” Armstrong added. “What Paul is doing — or what his supporters are doing — is really impressive.”
The question though, is whether the campaign can translate this into votes. Paul surprised everyone by raising the 4th most of any GOP candidate in Q3, and is hoping to raise $12 million this quarter. I guess only time will tell if this means he can mount a real campaign for the GOP nod, or whether he can build a Ross Perot-type 3rd party campaign.
