I think we're gonna need a bigger wallet.

At this rate, you are bound to see Gov. Ted Strickland in 30-second TV spots next year far more than you'll see his Republican rival, John Kasich.

That's how Joe Hallett of the Columbus Dispatch started his August 1, 2009 article about the first fundraising numbers reported in the 2010 gubernatorial race.

The day before, I had this to say about how to analyze the numbers reported earlier that day.

Now, it's easy to simply look at the total number and say this or that campaign did better. But that doesn't take into account a number of factors. For example, when did the candidate enter the race and did they transfer any funds from other campaign accounts?

My point was this - it's simply poor analysis to simply look at total raised to judge the quality of fundraising or the state of the race, particularly when two candidates have been fundraising for two completely different periods of time.

In Kasich's case, he filed his paperwork a few days before his June 1st announcement event. That meant over the course of a little over the month, Kasich raised about $467,000 in his first full month of campaigning, and about $526,000 total. Meanwhile, over the course of the full reporting period Strickland raised at a rate of $416,666 per month. In other words, when you look at quality of fundraising, Kasich outperformed Strickland.

Well, the totals reported yesterday have validated my earlier analysis.

Overall, Kasich has raised over $5 million dollars in the 7 months he's been in the race.

In the past 6 months, he's raised $4.48 million.

If you'll recall, my bet earlier this month was Kasich would improve his per month totals by a full 33%, and hit $625k per month for a total of $3.75M raised.

Apparently, I wasn't optimistic enough. Kasich raised an average of $747k a month - an increase of 60% over his one month total in June.

I know, I know - you were told there would be no math.

Now, for comparison, how much did Ted Strickland raise at this point 4 years ago?

His January 2006 report for the 2nd half of 2005 showed Ted having raised $1.95 million dollars, or $325k a month - less than half of what Kasich is raising at the same point 4 years later.


In other words, Kasich is doing a damn fine job raising cash. No, he won't be even close to being even with Strickland's total cash-on-hand, but this far out from actually having to spend the cash, and against an incumbent, that's expected.

Cash-on-hand matters when the ad wars begin. Until then, and as long as Kasich can continue to close the gap, our Republican nominee will be competitive on the airwaves.

Finally, one statistic particularly caught my attention.

3,457, or 29% of all contributions to Kasich, were made online. Once again, the Kasich campaign is winning the internet.

Strickland's numbers will be out on Friday. Look for more analysis then.