Via Ted Cruz’s campaign manager, Jeff Roe:

Q1 finance numbers for Cruz for President = 32 Million dollars! By far a new record! 612,000 donations at an average of $60 each. Thank you! — Jeff Roe (@jeffroe) April 8, 2016

POLITICO provides more detail:

Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign raised $32 million in the first quarter of 2016, with his March haul hitting a record $12.5 million, the campaign said Friday. …

His campaign had previously announced raising just under $12 million in February, and around $7.5 million in January. Cruz had already well outpaced the other GOP candidates in fundraising as of the last filing deadline (his chief rival, Donald Trump, has so far said he won’t accept big donations). Cruz began the month with $8 million in the bank. Roe didn’t release the campaign’s cash-on-hand numbers at the close of March. But in a release, the campaign said that in March, the “campaign had almost 240,000 donations with an average donation of $52.”

To put this in context, Cruz raised 50% more money this quarter than he did last quarter:

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Ted Cruz is doing what Jeb Bush, and Scott Walker and Marco Rubio, failed to do. It their infatuation to win the loyalty of the deep-pockets donors who could give the $2700 max donation, they ignored building a grass roots structure and a broad base of small donors. Those 612,000 small donors who chipped in $60/average last quarter can be hit again and again.

The Cruz campaign being this quick out of the blocks with its campaign finance report is also a sign of strength and a marker thrown down for the big donors who can max out the hard money contribution to the campaign and fund the super PACs supporting Cruz. I suspect that when the Kasich campaign releases its numbers we’re going to see that they are hanging in by the slack skin on their scrotum. And it will only get worse for them later on.