Hans Tanzler has $82K cash on hand for final days of CD 4 primary

The campaign of Hans Tanzler III in Florida’s 4th Congressional District has seen robust fundraising, heavy personal loans, and a lot of spending.

But he only has $82,314 on hand, well behind former Jacksonville sheriff John Rutherford, who has $136,000.

Tanzler has, throughout the whole campaign, raised $395,330, and has another $400,000 in personal loans.

The spending has been considerable: $713,515 in total hard money, in addition to another $204,000 from his “Conservative Outsider” Super PAC to target Rutherford.

The total of $917,515 is a lot of money to spend for under 15 percent in the polls in Northeast Florida, but that’s been the strategy: to increase Tanzler’s name identification and to boost Rutherford’s negatives, with contentions that the former sheriff is “liberal,” accommodating of illegal immigrants, overly tolerant of Muslims, and skittish on the Second Amendment.

In the “pre-primary” period between July 1 and Aug. 10 encompassed by his most recent filing, it appears the donor class has cooled on Tanzler.

He raised just $37,775, a number dwarfed by $200,000 in personal loans during the period (in four disbursements starting on July 29), and dwarfed further by $541,943 in expenditures.

Over a quarter-million dollars has been spent on television.

Front Line Strategies ran a textbook campaign on behalf of Tanzler. But their candidate never caught fire in polls. And it looks like he’s running out the clock with personal loans.