Fundraising Goals in the Eye of the Beholder

ABC News’ Z. Byron Wolf Reports: While top-tier buzz candidates like former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney and former New York Mayor Rudy Gillian are raking in tens of millions of dollars in donations for their primary and general election campaigns, traveling around Iowa and New Hampshire in caravans with network TV cameras, big money means something entirely different on the fringes of the presidential campaign.

These lesser-known candidates, traveling largely unnoticed around the early primary states in small entourages and ethanol-fueled pickups, say they are not deterred by the jaw dropping sums flooding into the coffers of the better-known "buzz" candidates.

It was widely seen as a blow to his campaign when Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., raised only just over $12 million for the quarter that ended March 31st.

Meanwhile, Rep. Tom Tancred, the Republican anti-illegal immigration crusader from Colorado, who officially announced his candidacy on an Iowa call-in show on Monday, issued joyous press released when his campaign reached a $1 million in fund raising on March 22nd.

"I am humbled to have over 40,000 Americans tell me to run for President and over half of them have backed this up with their hard earned money," Tancred said at the time. "I now know that with a grass roots campaign we will have the funds necessary to go the distance."

Other candidates continuing their campaigns for the country’s highest office would be envious even of Tancred’s million.

Duncan Hunter spokesman Roy Tyler admits that the Sana Diego Iraq war hawk has not raised close to a million yet. Closer, said Tyler, to half a million. But that’s enough, he added, to buy ethanol fuel for Hunter’s new pickup. And that, he said, is enough to keep the campaign going.

Hunter bought the Ford F-150 powered by high-grade ethanol fuel last week off an assembly line in Michigan and has been driving around the early-caucus state of Iowa ever since, drawing attention to his support of American industry and his pledge to "buy American."

Hunter plans to kick up his fund raising in the second quarter with telemarketing and the Internet.

Others have not yet begun in earnest. Former Virginia Gov. Jim Gilmore has only had a single fund raiser, hosted by former Bush Treasury Secretary John Snow, but his staffers say the governor brought in nearly $200,000 at that event in Richmond late in March.

"The goal was to raise enough money to do some polling, staff up, and see if its possible," said Gilmore campaign consultant Christian Josie.