Campaign Contributors

Small story by the AP talking about Fred's campaigning strategy. The article itself it more or less inane, but there was one statement by Fred that caught my attention:

Thompson pointed out he comes in second among Republicans in most national polls and has more than 100,000 contributors, despite making decisions that defy conventional wisdom.

The point that caught my attention is that his number of contributors is more than 100,000. On his Q2 filing, he reported just over 70,000 contributors. So in less than one month he has added 50% more contributors! Not bad.

In a connected story, there have been some reports of Fred paying $100,000 to join in on a Florida discussion and then only making a 5 minute speech before leaving for the debate. I don't know what exactly went on there (I haven't seen what I consider an objective account of the event), I noticed on the official site (I can't find the reference right now) that said that Fred had to be at the debate site over 4 hours ahead of time for his walk through for the debate. I wonder if the scheduling just did not line up for him going through a long speech.