If you were paying close attention to Harvard professor Larry Lessig’s quiet presidential campaign, you know that it came to an untimely end Monday. But what you might not know is that for what Lessig lacked in polling numbers he made up for in financial support.

Lessig’s campaign lasted just under two months, but in that time he managed to raise a comparable amount of money to most of the GOP’s undercard debate participants, including Rick Santorum, the runner-up for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana, and George Pataki, a former three-term governor of New York – all hardly unknowns in the Republican field.

Lessig on Sept. 9 announced his longest-of-long shot bids, which had the sole goal of changing the country’s campaign finance rules to get big business money out of elections. Lessig announced an exploratory committee on Aug. 11. His presidential run was contingent on raising $1 million by Labor Day. After achieving this goal, Lessig said he would resign from office – a plan from which he later backtracked. The premise garnered about as much interest among Democrats as the candidacies of former Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia and former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, which is to say not much.

Lessig’s bid came to an end, according to his campaign’s general consultant, Steve Jarding, in part due to a change in the Democratic National Committee's polling requirement for its second televised presidential debate that disqualified him from participating. That debate is slated for Nov. 14 in Des Moines, Iowa.

In all, Lessig’s campaign raised $1,016,189, according to the Federal Election Commission’s third-quarter filing, which includes donations collected from July 1 to Sept. 30. Santorum, Jindal and Pataki raised a combined $1,120,938 during that period. Individually, Santorum, Jindal and Pataki have raised $995,602, $1,158,197 and $409,309 respectively since the start of their campaigns which all began between late May and late June.

The Republican undercard debate has also featured Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has struggled at the polls but has managed to outperform his fellow participants on that stage in fundraising. Graham raised $1,052,658 in the third quarter and has pulled in $4,762,211 since the start of his campaign on June 1.



Ethan Rosenberg for USN&WR/Source: FEC

Ethan Rosenberg for USN&WR/Source: FEC

Lessig only spent $442,254 of his total, a burn rate of 44 percent. That rate is much lower than those competing in the Republican undercard debate, where each participant spent more than they collected in the third quarter. Strict FEC regulations govern what can be done with unused contributions. In general, they can be used to pay off lingering campaign debts or costs associated with dissolving his operation. They can also be donated to charity or a political party in unlimited amounts or contributed to a candidate under established campaign finance rules. Candidates are not permitted to use unspent funds for personal purposes.

Ethan Rosenberg for USN&WR/Source: FEC

Lessig is a relatively unknown challenger going up against a field that has had a front-runner since the end of President Obama’s first term, if not before. He's never held elected office and, despite having once been fictionalized on The West Wing, lacks the name recognition that have helped propel the outsider candidacies of Donald Trump, Ben Carson and Carly Fiorina on the Republican side.

It’s not surprising​ his campaign never gained the kind of traction, say Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has as the foil to Clinton’s mainstream appeal. He only made three trips to early primary states – all to New Hampshire according to The Chase presidential tracker – ​and spent the majority of his short campaign as a single-issue candidate. In a piece Lessig penned for The Atlantic, he commented "The resignation idea was a total bust. No one liked it. At all."​

What we will never find out is whether Lessig’s message would have resonated had it been broadcast on a national stage.





