Former Texas Governor Rick Perry has one key advantage over his potential rivals in the 2016 presidential race who shared the stage with him during the 2012 primaries: he is the only remaining contender not in debt.
As reported by Jamie Dupree’s Washington Insider blog, the campaigns of the 2012 Republican candidates are still carrying debt, with some of them significantly in the hole. The only exceptions are former Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas) and former Governor Mitt Romney (R-Massachusetts) — both of whom have said they are not running in 2016 — and Perry.
Campaign finance reports on the Federal Election Commission website shows that RickPerry.org, Inc. has $342,088.87 cash on hand and no debts.
The largest debt belongs to former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-Georgia), whose campaign owes $4.6 million, including nearly $650,000 in personal loans he made to the campaign and a laundry list of consultants, charter jet services, and technology vendors.
“Rick Santorum for President”, the campaign committee for former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pennsylvania) owes $463,024.84, and “Friends of Herman Cain, Inc.” has $194,799.47 in debts still outstanding from the effort to elect the Georgia businessman.
As Breitbart Texas reported last month, “Texans for Rick Perry,” Perry’s PAC that is supporting his current consideration of a presidential bid, is also in the black, even after spending over a million dollars in legal fees for his defense against charges that his veto of the funding for the Public Integrity Unit (PIU) of the Travis County District Attorney’s Office was improper. According to the last campaign finance report, the PAC had $2,859,665 remaining in its account as of December 31, 2014.
Follow Sarah Rumpf on Twitter @rumpfshaker.
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