Rudy Giuliani fired his chief campaign fund-raiser today, reports the Daily News. It’s probably an expression of dissatisfaction with how the fund-raising has gone this quarter, as Sunday is the filing deadline for presidential candidates, and all of the totals are being added up this week. But with his lead shortening in national polls, now is clearly not the time to have limitations on how much he can get his message out. Giuliani is replacing the (amicably) ousted Anne Dunsmore with Jim Lee, “a Texas moneyman and Bush ally” who is already on the Giuliani finance team. During the last quarter Dunsmore raised $17 million for Giuliani, which is a lot, but not nearly as much as the $27 million Hillary raised in the same period. As Hillary continues to try to define the race as a competition between only her and Giuliani, he’ll need all the money he can get to fight back and get Republican voters to start forgetting the other GOP candidates, too. Hillary is expected to announce that she raised about $20 million this quarter (she’s catching up with Obama; he’s expected to announce the same amount), so we’re betting Rudy’s falling short of that. Hmm. Forgot what it was like to be poor, didn’t we, Rudy?
