Liz Cheney may have left a lot of money on the table when she dropped her 2014 bid for a U.S. Senate seat in Wyoming today.

Through the end of September — the most recent fundraising report available — Cheney had raised more than $1 million in campaign cash, but had spent just $232,000. At the last official counting, Cheney had $795,062 on hand.

That’s not so different from the numbers reported by her opponent in the Republican primary, incumbent Sen. Mike Enzi . He raised about $848,000 in the three months from July 1 to Sept. 30, and spent just $127,000. Overall since his last race in 2008, Enzi has raised more than $1.6 million, and went into October with $1.2 million in the bank.

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A Politico report today says Cheney raised another $1 million in the fourth quarter of 2013, indicating that fundraising woes didn’t have much to do with her departure from the race. But Cheney was polling abysmally, with some estimating she lagged more than 40 points behind Enzi. Her campaign troubles included a widely-publicized split with her sister Mary over gay rights.

We won’t know the final numbers for sure for several weeks, but the data we do have shows she and Enzi had drastically different fundraising profiles.

Cheney raised 89 percent of her third quarter cash from individuals giving more than $200 — in other words, large individual donors. Enzi raised about 28 percent of his cash in the third quarter from those donors. The bulk of his money came from corporate PACs and other candidates — about $636,000, including $10,000 from the leadership PACs of Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-Ohio) and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Although Cheney had raised more from large donors in the state of Wyoming than Enzi — about $261,000 compared to $112,000 for Enzi — residents of that state accounted for just 28 percent of her individual donor giving, compared to 43 percent for Enzi. And Enzi had far more donors from Wyoming. In total, there were 607 donations over $200 made to Enzi’s campaign from Wyoming donors between July 1 and Sept. 30, as compared to 172 for Cheney.

Image: Liz Cheney (AP Photo/Matt Young, File)



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