Herman Cain's campaign has seen an undeniable jolt the last two weeks. The bigger news: the resultant dollar bills.
Cain's Atlanta-based campaign for the Republican presidential nomination is enjoying its best stretch of the race, a streak that his team says will be reflected in campaign finance reports due next month. Friday marks the end of the third quarter and all candidates make a push to boost fundraising before showing their financials in reports due by Oct. 15.
The reports are important as they not only show what candidates can afford toward a long campaign but are also seen as a general sign of support among voters.
Cain has been raising "several hundred thousand dollars a day" during the surge, spokeswoman Ellen Carmichael said.
Meanwhile, former Georgia congressman Newt Gingrich has also shown signs -- subtle ones -- of momentum that aides say will also be reflected in next month's campaign finance report.
But it is Cain, the former Godfather's Pizza CEO and former radio host, who is enjoying the most overt bounce of any candidate in the race. It began last week with a strong debate performance, coupled with a poor performance by Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Cain followed that with a surprise win a closely watched Florida straw poll.
Then this week, a Fox News national poll showed Cain running in third place with 17 percent, trailing only former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney (23 percent) and Perry (21). On Thursday, pollster SurveyUSA said Cain is just 2 percentage points behind Romney in Florida and 12 points ahead of Perry in the key early primary state.
All of these bumps, little and big, were interspersed with high-profile television appearances that culminate Friday night when Cain will appear on the "Tonight" show with Jay Leno.
It's quite a change for a campaign that many had written off two weeks ago.
"It's been unbelievable," Carmichael said of fund-raising the past two weeks. "It's more than even we expected."
Carmichael could not provide exact details yet and it remains unlikely that Cain will be able to out-raise Romney, the campaign's financial juggernaut. Cain raised $2.1 million in the second quarter, compared to more than $18 million for Romney. As of June 30, Cain reported having only $482,000 in cash on hand.
But it could be enough that Cain is considered "a serious candidate," Kennesaw State University political scientist Kerwin Swint said.
"That's going to be critical going forward," said Swint, a former GOP consultant and author of several books on national politics. "He's an appealing person. He's got a sort of ‘genuine-actor' image that people respond to. People believe and want to trust him."
Swint likens Cain's rise to that of former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in 2007-2008, a long-shot who also surged via strong debate performances. Huckabee won the 2008 Iowa Republican caucus and the 2008 Georgia presidential primary before fading. His affability helped Huckabee parlay his performance into a gig on Fox News.
Matt Towery, CEO of Atlanta-based polling firm InsiderAdvantage, sees Cain as a possible winner in Iowa.
"Unless he makes a mistake -- we've had the flavor of the month -- but Herman Cain is coming on," Towery said. "I don't write him off at all."
Nor does Towery banish Gingrich to has-been ranks. Towery was Gingrich's campaign chairman when Gingrich was speaker of the U.S. House and representing a northwest Georgia district.
Gingrich, Towery said, does not have to use campaign fundraising reports as a sign he's still relevant, if only because Gingrich "created so little expectation that he would be raising any substantial money."
"It's pretty clear to me what Gingrich's strategy has been and will continue to be and that is to use what is his strong point, which is obviously the debates, to hope that he continues to move up while other candidates such as [U.S. Rep.] Michelle Bachman and perhaps even Rick Perry move down," Towery said.
Gingrich must "hang in there and be viewed as one of the legitimate contenders," Towery said.
Gingrich spokesman R.C. Hammond said his boss is doing just that. The Fox News poll that showed Cain in third place also elevated Gingrich to double digits -- 11 percent, good for fourth place. That's an improvement and something Hammond hopes could continue with the release Thursday of Gingrich's "21st Century Contract with America," a policy proposal modeled on the 1994 contract that he used to help elevate Republicans to control in Congress.
"The more Gingrich is out there, the more people who are looking at him as an alternative to the front-runners," Hammond said. "On the one hand, you've got two front-runners [Romney and Perry] attacking each other. And you've got another out there [Gingrich] saying the country's in trouble. We should be out there taking it to Obama."
Hammond would not predict Gingrich's fundraising totals but said the report will tell a tale of two halves of the quarter. When the period began in July, Gingrich was still recovering from a disastrous launch to his campaign and a string of negative press. Around the time of the August debate in Ames, Iowa, Gingrich started to recover and the rest of that month and September saw money beginning to reach the campaign.
"It's been a slow escalation of money," Hammond said, noting also that Gingrich has been able to reduce the more than $1 million in campaign debt he reported in July, when he revealed raising $2.1 million for the quarter with more than $300,000 in cash on hand.
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