It’s always ominous when a presidential campaign stops paying its staff. But the fundraising problems for Rick Perry’s campaign might be the easier problem to solve. News of the financial troubles will probably get Perry’s diehard supporters to max out, and while his well-funded super PAC can’t coordinate with his actual campaign, he at least will have an institution with millions of dollars ready to run ads to tout him to GOP primary voters.
No, the real problem for Perry is that he’s at one percent in the latest Suffolk poll of Iowa; a PPP poll from yesterday put him at 2 percent. (The Des Moines Register had Perry at 6 percent in May, as did Gravis.)
New Hampshire was never going to be Perry’s strongest state, but he registered a zero in Gravis’ latest poll in the Granite State. The previous poll, from WMUR, had him at 2 percent. A few polls in this state had Perry at 4 percent in the spring.
One might think Perry’s Texas style might make him the first choice of Republicans in the first Southern primary. But in South Carolina, the Augusta Chronicle poll out this month also puts Perry at . . . zero percent. A Gravis Marketing poll in late July had Perry at 2.5 percent.
Nationally, the numbers are no better: 1 percent in the Fox News poll, 2 percent in the Bloomberg poll, 1.8 percent in the Monmouth poll.
Obviously, this is a chicken-and-the-egg situation; polling success drives fundraising, which can be used for advertising and grassroots efforts, which drives more polling success, and so on.
And yes, it’s early. But this can’t be where Rick Perry and his team wanted to be in mid August.