Jeb Bush’s super PAC has raised nine times as much as his campaign

Quarterly campaign finance disclosures are trickling in, and early reports suggest that Jeb Bush’s campaign raised $11.4 million since he announced his candidacy. For perspective, that’s less than the $15 million Bernie Sanders raised during the same filing period.

The *campaign* 2ndQ hauls so far: Hillary Clinton: $45M Bernie Sanders: $15M Jeb Bush: $11.4M Ted Cruz: $10M Carly Fiorina: $1.4M

— Mark Murray (@mmurraypolitics) July 9, 2015

But that’s nowhere near as much as Jeb’s super PAC, Right to Rise USA, is reported to have raised. While super PACs are not required to submit their official numbers until later this month, today Right to Rise USA posted on their website that they have raised over $103 million from 9,900 donors. Their post also brags that of those 9,900 donors, 9,400 of them gave less than $25,000; the bar for small-dollar contributions set by official campaign committees generally tops out at $250, or 100 times less than that.

Taken together, this means that Right to Rise USA has raised nine times as much money as Jeb Bush’s campaign, with an average donation of over $10,000 — four times the maximum contribution individuals can make to official campaign committees.

It’s important to note that Jeb intentionally delayed launching his campaign in order to raise more money for Right to Rise, which gave him less time to raise money for his official campaign. However, that doesn’t mean that we should immediately chalk up the lower figure from Jeb’s official campaign to timing alone:

Hey, guys? Jeb was running for president for more than 16 days. People just had to wait to submit their checks.

— Adam Smith (@asmith83) July 9, 2015

Also, none of this takes into account the money raised by Right to Rise Policy Solutions, the 501(c)(4) organization supporting Bush’s campaign. It will also have to file a disclosure form at the end of the month, but will not have to disclose its donors.

Jeb Bush, via Gage Skidmore / Flickr

We’ve known for a while now that Jeb’s official campaign is merely a vehicle for the behemoth that will be his super PAC, rather than the other way around. In advance of his official announcement, he went on a final fundraising blitz for his extra-campaign organizations, attending 60 fundraisers for his leadership and super PACs.

In a fragmented, competitive Republican primary that will likely drag out for a long time across a large number of states, a prohibitively large amount of money can make up for a lot of other shortcomings. With Donald Trump sucking up so much of the Fox News caucus and Right to Rise having more cash on hand than some of Jeb’s opponents will raise in the entire cycle, he’s got to be felling good going into August.