Ron Paul Leads in Contributions from Military

thespinfactor.com has an interesting report on contributions from the Republican Presidential campaign. It seems that Congressman Ron Paul leads all GOP candidates in contributions from military employees. Paul is the lone Republican candidate who opposes continued military action in Iraq. He has been quoted as saying "we should not be over there refereeing Iraq's civil war" and "it was a mistake to go and a mistake to stay". Apparently, Department of Defense employees feel the same way. It is nothing less than amazing that a man who has only raised a fraction of the totals of the GOP's top tier has more money from the military than any other candidate.

One caveat to the numbers is that John McCain has about 22% of his donations listed as "occupation requested" so that we simply don't know if they came from the military or not. Still, it is unlikely that including those funds would close McCain's gap behind Paul, and even if it did it would make Paul a strong number two. Here are the figures....

NAME: TOTAL [ARMY] [NAVY] [AIRFORCE] [VETERAN] [USMC**]

RON PAUL: 24,965 [6,975] [6,765] [4,650] [5,075] [1,500]
MoneyMcCain: 17,475 [6925] [6305] [1795] [800] [1600]
Romney: 3,551 [2,051] [0] [1500] [0]
Giuliani: 2,320 [1,450] [370] [250] [250]
Hunter: 1000 [0] [1000] [0]
Huckabee: 750 [250] [0] [500]
Tancredo: 350 [350] [0] [0]
Brownback: 71 [71] [0] [0]
Thompson: 0 [0] [0] [0]

Units are contributions in dollars by employees of the respective military organizations.

Source: Finance Reports for the 2007 July Quarterly.

Percentages**:

49.5% Ron Paul
34.6% McCain
7.0% Romney
4.6% Giuliani
2.0% Hunter
2.3% Others

*Note: These statistics include the contributions of employees who recorded or indicated their military branch. Contributions where no employer was specified were naturally not included.