Rick Perry's campaign pulled out all the stops in the end. | AP Photo Perry burned cash quickly as campaign fizzled

Rick Perry burned through cash at a prolific rate in the final three months of his presidential campaign, from $80,000 in chartered jets and more than $65,000 in "research" in late July.

The Republican former governor of Texas, who pulled the plug on his campaign on Sept. 11 raised just $287,000 for the quarter from July1 to Sept. 30, and his campaign burned through more than four times as much, depleting his account to just $44,000 on hand.


His campaign also returned more than $60,000 to donors late last month.

Perry’s campaign reported paying $200,000 to Abstract Communications, the firm of his campaign manager Jeff Miller, bringing Abstract’s total receipts from the campaign to $591,000 for the year.

But Miller explained that neither he nor his business partner, Rob Johnson, received a penny of that.

Instead, he told POLITICO, it was all passed through to vendors for services including video production, fundraising, digital expenses, website development and compliance consulting.

“We paid everyone else before ourselves,” Miller said.

The setup, which is similar to the one Mitt Romney’s top consultants deployed in 2012, makes it more difficult for competing campaigns and reporters to use Federal Election Commission reports to decipher campaign strategy.

Among Perry's contributors to his ill-fated campaign in the final months was former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour, whose nephew, Austin, helmed Perry's super PAC network.

Perry's money woes aren't exactly a surprise. His campaign stopped paying staffers in the final few weeks. Although his super PACs had about $13 million left in the bank, campaign-finance law prohibits coordination with the official campaign, leaving Perry with little funding to try to regain momentum.

